Eugen Fischer (5 July 1874 – 9 July 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and

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 ...

, and a member 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 ...

. He served as director of the

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was a research institute founded in 1927 in Berlin, Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation partially funded the actual building of the Institute and helped keep the Institut ...

, and also served as rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin. Fischer's ideas informed the

Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg Laws (, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law ...

of 1935 which served to justify the Nazi Party's belief in German racial superiority to other "races", and especially the Jews.

Adolf 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 ...

read Fischer's work while he was imprisoned in 1923 and he used Fischer's eugenic notions to support his vision of a pure Aryan society in his manifesto ''

Mein Kampf (; ) is a 1925 Autobiography, autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The book outlines many of Political views of Adolf Hitler, Hitler's political beliefs, his political ideology and future plans for Nazi Germany, Ge ...

'' (''My Struggle''). After the war, Fischer completed his memoirs. It is believed that in them he lessened his role in the

genocidal Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" b ...

programme of

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. He died in 1967.

Life

Fischer was born in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( ; ; ; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, third-largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, after its capital Stuttgart a ...

Grand Duchy of Baden The Grand Duchy of Baden () was a German polity on the east bank of the Rhine. It originally existed as a sovereign state from 1806 to 1871 and later as part of the German Empire until 1918. The duchy's 12th-century origins were as a Margravia ...

, in 1874. He studied medicine,

folkloristics Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...

, history, anatomy, and anthropology in Berlin, Freiburg and Munich. In 1918, he joined the Anatomical Institute in Freiburg, part of the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially ), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The university was founded in 1 ...

Early work

In 1906, Fischer conducted experiments and medical “research” in

German South West Africa German South West Africa () was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, though Germany did not officially recognise its loss of this territory until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. German rule over this territory was punctuated by ...

(now Namibia). He studied the

Basters The Basters (also known as Baasters, Rehobothers, or Rehoboth Basters) are a Southern African ethnic group descended from Cape Coloureds and Nama of Khoisan origin. Since the second half of the 19th century, the Rehoboth Baster community has ...

, offspring of German or

Boer Boers ( ; ; ) are the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled the Dutch ...

men and Black African (

Khoekhoe Khoikhoi ( /ˈkɔɪkɔɪ/ ''KOY-koy'') (or Khoekhoe in Namibian orthography) are the traditionally nomadic pastoralist indigenous population of South Africa. They are often grouped with the hunter-gatherer San (literally "foragers") peop ...

) women in that area. His study concluded with a call to prevent the production of a

mixed race The term multiracial people refers to people who are mixed with two or more races and the term multi-ethnic people refers to people who are of more than one ethnicities. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mul ...

by the prohibition of mixed marriages such as those which he had studied. It included

human experimentation Human subject research is systematic, scientific investigation that can be either interventional (a "trial") or observational (no "test article") and involves human beings as research subjects, commonly known as test subjects. Human subject r ...

on the Herero and

Nama people Nama (in older sources also called Namaqua) are an African ethnic group of South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. They traditionally speak the Khoekhoe language, Nama language of the Khoe languages, Khoe-Kwadi language family, although many Nama ...

. He argued that while the existing "

Mischling (; ; ) was a pejorative legal term which was used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed " Aryan" and "non-Aryan", such as Jewish, ancestry as they were classified by the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. In German, the word has the general ...

" descendants of the mixed marriages might be useful for Germany, he recommended that they should not continue to reproduce. His recommendations were followed and by 1912 interracial marriage was prohibited throughout the German colonies.Friedlander 1997, p. 11 As a precursor to his experiments on Jews in Nazi Germany, he collected bones and skulls for his studies, in part from medical experimentation on African prisoners of war in Namibia during the

Herero and Nama genocide The Herero and Nama genocide or Namibian genocide, formerly known also as the Herero and Namaqua genocide, was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment waged against the Herero people, Herero (Ovaherero) and the Nama people, N ...

. Fischer also sterilized Herero women. His ideas which were related to the maintenance of the apparent purity of races, influenced future German Nazi legislation on race, including the

Nuremberg laws The Nuremberg Laws (, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The two laws were the Law ...

. In 1927, Fischer was a speaker at the

World Population Conference The first ever World Population Conference was held at the Salle Centrale, Geneva, Switzerland, from 29 August to 3 September 1927. Organized by the forerunner of the United Nations, the League of Nations, and Margaret Sanger; the conference was an ...

which was held in Geneva, Switzerland. In the same year, Fischer became the director of the

( KWI-A), a role for which he'd been recommended the prior year by

Erwin Baur Erwin Baur (16 April 1875, in Ichenheim, Grand Duchy of Baden – 2 December 1933) was a German geneticist and botanist. Baur worked primarily on plant genetics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research (then in Mü ...

Nazi Germany

In the years from 1937–1938 Fischer and his colleagues analysed 600 children in

who were descended from French-African soldiers who occupied western areas of Germany after the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

and were known as the Rhineland bastards; the children were subsequently subjected to sterilization. WP Josef Mengele 1956

Fischer did not officially join the

until 1940. However, he was influential with National Socialists early on. Adolf Hitler read his two-volume work, ''Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene'' (first published in 1921 and co-written by

and

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,

) while incarcerated in 1923 and used its ideas in ''Mein Kampf''. He also wrote ''The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of

Miscegenation Miscegenation ( ) is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races or ethnicities. It has occurred many times throughout history, in many places. It has occasionally been controversial or illegal. Adjectives describin ...

among Humans'' (1913) (), a field study which provided context for later racial debates, influenced German colonial legislation.

.''Holocaust Encyclopedia'' p. 420. Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications such as skull dimensions which were used to determine racial origins, and he developed the Fischer–Saller scale for hair colour. He and the members of his team experimented on

Gypsies {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , ...

and African-Germans, drawing their blood and measuring their skulls. After directing the

, he was succeeded by Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who tutored

Josef Mengele Josef Mengele (; 16 March 19117 February 1979) was a Nazi German (SS) officer and physician during World War II at the Russian front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, often dubbed the "Angel of Death" (). He performed Nazi hum ...

when he was active at

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

. In 1933, Fischer signed the ''

Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State officially translated into English as the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State was a document presented on 11 November 1933 at the Albert Hall in Leipzi ...

''. In the same year,

appointed him rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin, now Humboldt University. Fischer retired from the university in 1942. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a student of Fischer. Efforts to return the Namibian skulls which were taken by Fischer were started with an investigation which was conducted by the University of Freiburg in 2011 and they were completed with the return of the skulls in March 2014. In 1944, Fischer intervened in an attempt to get his friend

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art ...

, the Nazi philosopher, released from service in the ''

Volkssturm The (, ) was a ''levée en masse'' national militia established by Nazi Germany during the last months of World War II. It was set up by the Nazi Party on the orders of Adolf Hitler and established on 25 September 1944. It was staffed by conscri ...

'' militia. However, Heidegger had already been released from service when Fischer's letter arrived.

Works

1909 to 1949

*Fischer, Eugen. 1899. "Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Nasenhöhle und des Thränennasenganges der Amphisbaeniden", ''Archiv für Mikroskopische Anatomie''. 55:1, pp. 441–478. *Fischer, Eugen. 1901. "Zur Kenntniss der Fontanella metopica und ihrer Bildungen". ''Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie''.4:1. pp. 17–30. *Fischer, Eugen, Professor an der Universität Freiburg i. Br. 1906. "Die Variationen an Radius und Ulna des Menschen". ''Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie''. Vol. 9. No. 2. *Fischer, Eugen. 1908. ''Der Patriziat Heinrichs III und Heinrichs IV.'' Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Fischer's PhD thesis. *Maass, Alfred. ''Durch Zentral-Sumatra''. Berlin: Behr. 1910. Additional contributing authors: J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan and E. Fischer. *Fischer, Eugen. 1913.''Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen: anthropologische und ethnographiesche Studien am Rehobother Bastardvolk in Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika'', ausgeführt mit Unterstützung der Kgl. preuss, Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jena: G. Fischer. *Gaupp, Ernst Wilhelm Theodor. Eugen Fischer (ed.) 1917. ''

August Weismann August Friedrich Leopold Weismann (; 17 January 18345 November 1914) was a German evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist. Fellow German Ernst Mayr ranked him as the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century, after Charl ...

: sein Leben und sein Werk''. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer. *Schwalbe, G. and Eugen Fischer (eds.). ''Anthropologie''. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1923. *Fischer, E. and H.F.K. Günther. ''Deutsche Köpfe nordischer Rasse: 50 Abbildungen mit Geleitwarten''. Munich: J.F. Lehmann. 1927. *Fischer, Eugen and Gerhard Kittel. ''Das antike Weltjudentum : Tatsachen, Texte, Bilder''. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1943.

1950 to 1959

*Sarkar, Sasanka Sekher; Eugen Fischer and Keith Arthur, ''The Aboriginal Races of India'', Calcutta: Bookland. 1954. *Fischer, Eugen. ''Begegnungen mit Toten: aus den Erinnerungen eines Anatomen''. Freiburg: H.F. Schulz. 1959.

Notes

References

* * * * *Schmuhl, Hans-Walter. "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, 2003 * *Friedlander, Henry. 1997. ''The origins of Nazi genocide: from euthanasia to the Final Solution''. University of North Carolina Press. .

External links

Book Review
of ''The Rehoboth Bastards'' in ''Nature'' (1913)

* * * ttp://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(CSHL_List)/Eugen%20Fischer.html Detailed overview of Eugen Fischer with references* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fischer, Eugen 1874 births 1967 deaths Physicians from Karlsruhe German eugenicists Herero and Nama genocide perpetrators Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Physicians in the Nazi Party People from the Grand Duchy of Baden University of Freiburg alumni Academic staff of the University of Freiburg Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Academic staff of the University of Würzburg Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin Nazi eugenics People associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics Max Planck Institute directors Recipients of the Cothenius Medal