In Search of "Aryan Blood": Serology in Interwar and National Socialist Germany

II. Seroanthropology in the early 1920s: Blood, Race, and Eugenics

41 The Hirszfelds’ research in Salonika was a remarkable anthropological study for its time. Not only did it propose a new method of racially screeningpopulations ,butithadsurveyedanespeciallylargesubjectgroup(8,000 people), which was crucial if the work was to receive a positive reception in the medical community. In addition, the implications of the findings were attractive in their simple claim that there had originally been two racial types: A in the West and B in the East. Furthermore, objective comparison was made possible by the biochemical race index, an equation that classified a group studied as one of three different serological racial types, the two extremes of “Western European” and “Asiatic-African,” in between which fell “intermediate,” or Mediterranean peoples. In spite of this seeming transparency, the study prompted many questions. The Hirszfelds referred to the “purity” of the different races in relation to “blood mixing.” Did this mean that “pure” races still existed and that they could be identified by examining blood? Could blood determine the extent of miscegenation and with whom it had occurred? If so, was it then possible to indicate when and where this “mixing” had taken place? If blood types A and B were related to “Western” and “Eastern” races, respectively, was it then the case that individuals with a certain type of blood exhibited mental or physical racial characteristics traditionally associated with that race? Reactions to the study varied widely…and often by nationality. C H A P T E R I I seroanthropology in the early 1920s: BLOOD, RACE, AND EUGENICS med_04___ok.indd 41 2011-12-18 20:20:31 42 CHAPTER II Frigyes Verzár and Oszkár Weszeczky: Seroanthropological Research in Hungary The study generally regarded as the first to duplicate the Hirszfelds’ was published by Drs. Frigyes Verzár and Oszkár Weszeczky of the University of Debrecen (Hungary) in 1921.139 The authors set out to establish whether different racial groups that had coexisted in and around Budapest would show variations in their blood-type distributions. Their study presented an important divergence from the research in Salonika; the Hirszfelds’ subjects had lived together under the same circumstances for only about two years, whereas the groups in Hungary could trace their lineage in the area back hundreds of years. The results of an analysis of peoples who had lived together for many generations would be decisive as, in spite of evidence to the contrary, there were physicians who still theorized that blood type could change with environment. If no differences were found between the groups in Hungary, it would undermine Hirszfeld’s hypothesis altogether. ThethreedifferentracialtypesstudiedbyVerzárandWeszeczkyincluded “native Hungarians” from Debrecen, Germans from several villages near Budapest,and“Gypsies”(Zigeunern,hereafterreferredtoasRoma-Sinti).140 Centuries of German migration and settlement had created a “checkerboardofGermanspeechislands ”throughoutCentralandEasternEurope.141 The Germans examined by Verzár and Weszeczky were the descendants of Habsburg colonization efforts in the wake of the reconquest of Hungary from the Ottoman Turks at the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.142 Large swaths of Hungary were left depopulated by the conflict, 139 In 1919, unaware of the Hirszfelds’ simultaneous research in Salonika, Weszeczky researched the blood types of 457 Hungarians, eighty-one Romanians, and twelve Germans in Hungary. Despite the limited size of the test group, it was clear that the blood type distributions in Hungary differed from those in Germany and the United States. Weszeczky theorized that these variations might have stemmed from racial differences, though he recognized that they could be due to factors such as diet or climate. Determining this, however, would require more extensive research, which was prevented by enemy occupation during the war. See F. Verzár and O. Weszeczky, “Rassenbiologische Untersuchungen mittels Isohämagglutininen,” Biochemisches Zeitschrift 126, nos. 1–4 (1921): 33–39. 140 The subjects included 1,500 Hungarians, 476 Germans, and 385 “Gypsies.” ”’’Sinti’ refers to the Sindh River in India, and ‘Roma’ to ‘human beings’ in the Romani language, though they were generally called ‘Gypsies’ (from Egyptians) at the time.” Deborah Dwork, History of the Holocaust (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), 91. 141 Charles W. Ingrao and Franz A.J. Szabo, eds. The Germans and the East (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008), 5. 142 Ibid., 4. med_04___ok.indd 42 2011-12-18 20:20:31 43 Frigyes Verzár and Oszkár Weszeczky andsuccessiveHabsburgmonarchspursuedanaggressiveprogramofresettling the areas, sometimes with South Slav refugees but more commonly with German colonists...