Jews and Race: Writings on Identity and Difference, 1880–1940

9 The Brain Weight of Jews

71 Richard Weinberg was a privatdocent (a formal academic title indicating that the individual had a doctorate and holds an academic position somewhat akin to lecturer in the US system) at the University of Dorpat—known today as the University of Tartu—in Estonia. Sander Gilman identifies Weinberg as a physician (Smart Jews: The Construction of the Image of Jewish Superior Intelligence [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996], 52). Whether or not Weinberg was Jewish is unclear, though it is highly unlikely. At the time, the university town of Dorpat (Tartu) was relatively tolerant of Jews, and there was a significant Jewish student presence at the university. However, according to Tonu Parming (“The Jewish Community and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Estonia, 1918–1940,” Journal of Baltic Studies 10, no. 3 [1979]:250), “The University of Tartu had no Jewish faculty members until 1934.” (I thank Rachel Rothstein for this reference.) I have nonetheless included Weinberg’s article here because of the material discussed and because the piece appeared in a “Jewish” journal—that is, a journal funded by the Jewish community and created and run by Jews, with the explicit purpose of influencing Jewish public opinion. Whether or not the editors agreed with every detail of Weinberg’s argument, it seems safe to say that they believed the general topic of the essay was a legitimate one. It is known that numerous researchers have dealt with the national and racial traits of the Jews from a variety of perspectives. Physical anthropology, too, has frequently sought to get a grip on this object of study. Since Blumenbach, Pruner Bey, and H. Welcker,33 who gathered the first real facts in this area, observers have been arming themselves with calipers and tape measures, advancing ever deeper into the racial body of the Jewish Volk. A great number of facts and findings have been accumulated, which will hopefully yield rich results once researchers succeed in differentiating between the essential and nonessential, 9 | The Brain Weight of Jews Richard Weinberg “Das Hirngewicht der Juden,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 1, no. 3 (1905): 5–10. 33. [Hermann Welcker (1822–97) was a German physical anthropologist.] 72 | A N T H R O P O LO G Y and once a presentation thereof becomes feasible on the basis of a well-founded methodology and unified principles. We already possess several statistical surveys from the East and Southeast of Europe—and now recently from America as well—which aim for a systematic inquiry into general anatomy, head form, pigmentation, and proportions of limbs, and even cover the consideration of certain physiological and pathological conditions. At any rate, it must be admitted that the research done up until now has made its way only to the threshold in terms of exploring the racial organism. Its inner spaces, that holy of holies, the sinuous paths of the brain’s convolutions, the wonderfully delicate structure of the nervous system, the labyrinthine systems and components of the cells and fibers, encompassing the most sublime riddles of the human spirit—at no time have these been opened up and illuminated. Even enthusiastic and intrepid researchers have not dared to approach and then knock on this door. And yet it remains true that nowhere else than in the brain can the “birthplace” of human history be located, the cradle of art and that mysterious bridal chamber in which body and soul—the gods of light and the children of nature—celebrate orgies (Reil); that it is not merely the fate of individuals , but just as much the past and future of entire races and organic communities that have been decided by a rather small amount of brain matter, which, with its precious particles and atoms, hides itself from us in its marble vault. I will make an attempt here to contribute some material to the problem at hand and to explain its relevance for the racial theory about the brain. i The observation has been made in some countries that the Jews already differ from the surrounding populations in terms of head size, and in particular the formation of the cranium. Lombroso,34 for instance, noticed that the Semitic elements within the Turin population possess a somewhat smaller cranial capacity than the other inhabitants of this region,35 and this was attributed to the fact 34. [Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) was an Italian Jewish anthropologist and medical researcher who is considered one of the founders...