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

III. Organizing Seroanthropology: the Establishment of the German Institute for Blood Group Research

71 The Völkisch Notion of “Blood Defilement” By the mid-1920s there were enough blood type surveys to suggest that some affiliation might exist between blood and other physical characteristics . Völkisch physicians tended to interpret type B blood as a marker of Eastern descent and, though there had been findings to indicate otherwise , they further linked this type to other inferior traits—such as inherited conditions, amoral behavior, or even propensity for disease. A group of researchers in these nations believed that seroanthropology might assist in meeting their racial and eugenic objectives. Paul Steffan’s postwar blood type studies of native Germans drew the interest of anthropologist Otto Reche and played a key role in the decision to create an organization focused solely on blood science. Reche and Steffan founded the German Institute for Blood Group Research, which, in spite of its name, was receptive to foreign membership and contributions. Steffan co-founded the institute, but Reche was its principal founder and chair. Reche’s instruction and experience in the field of racial anthropology, as well as his wartime experiences, shaped his decision to form the institute and would continue to shape its priorities throughout its existence. Reche’s völkisch tendencies, his racial stereotyping, and his career objectives were a product of his schooling, the intellectual environment of the time, and personal ambition. These helped to set the objectives for the German Institute for Blood Group Research and how its research agenda was proposed to state authorities. C H A P T E R I I I ORGANIZING seroanthropology: the ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GERMAN inSTITUTE FOR BLOOD GROUP RESEARCH med_04___ok.indd 71 2011-12-18 20:20:46 72 CHAPTER III Otto Reche and Racial Anthropology Otto Reche was born a Prussian citizen in 1879, in lower Silesia, on the border with Bohemia. His mother was born in Magdeburg, and his father in Upper Silesia.247 He studied medicine at the universities of Jena and Breslau , where he was exposed to a range of subjects—including anthropology, ethnology, anatomy, zoology, geology, geography, comparative philology, and botany, but also, importantly, folk history and prehistory.248 Reche was instructed by Ernst Haeckel, a recognized figure in German race science, who had once been an assistant to Rudolf Virchow, co-founder of the German Anthropology Association. Haeckel’s Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte (Natural history of creation), published in 1868, represented the human species in a hierarchy from the lowest “racial types,” such as the Papuan and Hottentot, to the highest, or the Caucasian peoples, which included the “Indo-German and Semitic” races.249 His ranking of peoples was also evident during the polygenism/monogenism controversy; polygenists believed that the different human races had distinct origins, while monogenists claimed they came from common biological roots. Haeckel believed that orangutans were the primal ancestors of the Asians, and gorillas were the ancestors of the Africans, while Europeans had descended from chimpanzees —generally recognized as the most advanced of the primates.250 Haeckel and Reche corresponded on many subjects, with an emphasis on zoology, biology, the origins of man and the different races—and the “Aryans ” (Indogermanen) in particular.251 RechehadalsostudiedwithFelixvonLuschan.UnlikeHaeckel,Luschan was widely regarded as the leader of the liberal tradition in German anthropology after Virchow’s death in 1902. In 1911 Luschan was appointed the first chair of anthropology at Humboldt University in Berlin. He also acted 247 Geisenhainer, Rasse ist Schicksal, 23. 248 Ibid. 249 Robert J. Richards, The Tragic Sense of Life: Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 269. It is important to note that Haeckel did not support natural selection but instead believed in a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics. See Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1979). There is still discussion over whether Haeckel was a Darwinian or a Lamarckian; considerable debate also surrounds Haeckel’s role in the rise of völkisch race science at the beginning of the twentieth century. 250 Richards, The Tragic Sense of Life, 252. 251 Geisenhainer, Rasse ist Schicksal, 46. med_04___ok.indd 72 2011-12-18 20:20:46 73 Otto Reche and Racial Anthropology as director of the department for Africa and Oceania at the Museum for Ethnology (Museum für Völkerkunde) in Berlin.252 Although Luschan did not make hierarchical claims comparable to those of his colleague Haeckel, he was similarly interested in...