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33 The Spread of Racist Eugenics in Weimar During the Weimar era, traditional social and political barriers increasingly broke down in Germany. This collapse was exemplified by the promulgation of a democratic constitution, the hitherto unprecedented power of the Social Democratic and Catholic Center parties, and the growing role of women in public life.1 In the cultural sphere, some formerly elite practices such as dueling began to disappear. Others, including genealogical practice, continued to spread with even greater rapidity throughout German society. Despite genealogy’s increasing popularization in Weimar, the socioeconomic status of leading German genealogists remained much the same as it had been: the educated middle-class and nobility. Now, however, with the growing turmoil of their times, these men grew increasingly worried. The Weimar Republic arose out of Germany’s unconditional defeat in World War I. Numerous Germans therefore associated the new regime with both the abortive communist revolutions in 1918–1919 and the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles. While many supported the fledgling republic to at least some degree, a significant number of others sought to undermine it. Expanding political democratization and cultural experimentation were often countered by strident right-wing reaction. Economic disaster in the form of hyperinflation and then depression contributed to the feeling of crisis. This, in turn, led to widening political polarization and radicalization on both the left and right. Many leading genealogists increasingly viewed “science” as at least a partial solution to these growing problems: cleansing society through eugenic means. For others , the solution was to increasingly stress the underlying unity of all “Germans” in the hope of diffusing social tensions. And many began to perceive a connection between these two remedies: claims of the biological unity of all Germans and the necessity for a “racial cleansing” of German society multiplied in the genealogical literature during this period. Indeed, virtually all of the elements of Nazi racist eugenic ideology appeared in the genealogical writing of those years, helping to explain the ease with which that regime institutionalized racist policies after 1933. 3 34 The Nazi Ancestral Proof Growth of Weimar Genealogical Practice and Changing Socioeconomic Backgrounds During the Weimar Republic, all major regions of Germany saw the growth or creation of genealogical societies and related journals.2 In 1920, for example, the Roland had approximately 600 members throughout Germany; in 1930, it had close to 3,000. With some 288 members in its first year (1904), by 1924 the Zentralstelle numbered more than 1,800. In 1920, German civil registrars also created their own national organization, the Reich Federation of German Civil Registrars. While not, strictly speaking, a genealogical society, the Federation published an organ, the Journal for Civil Registry Practice (Zeitschrift für Standesamtswesen), from 1921, and evinced great interest in genealogy, regularly featuring articles on the practice. Because the Federation was by far the largest “genealogical society” (with about 50,000 members in 1925) and because of its quasi-governmental standing (its journal was an official organ for many national and regional government pronouncements ), this study also uses that journal to evaluate German genealogical practice in the Weimar era. Located in northeast Germany, as were the three other genealogical organizations studied in detail, the Federation’s journal also had national distribution . Moreover, like the Roland and Zentralstelle, the Federation had local branches throughout Germany. In addition to this expansion of existing national genealogical societies in the Weimar era, by the 1920s there were also hundreds of so-called “family associations [Familienverbände]” in Germany. Moreover, between 1918 and 1938, more than fifty local study groups arose. Likewise, between 1919 and 1932, at least eight more periodicals with national circulation appeared, as did at least nineteen new regional journals. In Austria, an additional three journals appeared prior to that country’s incorporation into Nazi Germany in 1938. By 1924, hundreds of family associations were publishing newsletters for their members.3 The spread of genealogical organizations and journals also occurred in German-speaking areas outside Germany and Austria. In 1926, for instance, Dr. Franz Josef Umlauft established the Central Office for Sudeten-German Family Research in Czechoslovakia. By 1928, it distributed a broadsheet of the same name to “over a thousand clients.”4 While Starke and Degener still remained the two primary specialty publishing houses, both the Reich Federation of German Civil Registrars and especially the Zentralstelle also increasingly published genealogical related works in Weimar. Nonspecialty firms, too, began to issue such works. In 1928, the Herold’s journal, the...

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