Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1940

Volksdeutsche and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Vienna: The “Marienfeld Project”

Volksdeutsche and Racial Anthropology in Interwar Vienna: The “Marienfeld Project” Maria Teschler-Nicola In the second half of the nineteenth century, racial anthropology was shaped by positivist and materialist thinking, initially aiming at a quantitative assessment of physical traits and comparative anatomical “studies of race” in order to identify “ideal racial types.” But in contrast to the descent-based anthropological orientation, this branch of physical anthropology soon arrived at a deadlock. In Geschichte der Anthropologie (History of Anthropology), Wolfgang Mühlmann described this phenomenon as an “accumulation of a large number of facts whose interpretative value to biology has remained questionable .”1 One of the most prominent exponents of this previously static approach was Augustin Weisbach (1837–1914), a Viennese anatomist whose scientific “work and life program” aimed to identify, the “racial differences” among the populations of the Habsburg Empire.2 Rudolf Pöch (1870–1921), recipient of the first Chair of Anthropology at the University of Vienna, conceded that Weisbach had “dealt with an enormous volume of material” and stressed his achievements in the field of anthropology in Austria.3 Pöch also raised subtle criticism of Weisbach’s work which, in his opinion, failed to make use of the available “resources and methods of modern anthropology” (implying not only technique, but also the genetic-biological approach). The rediscovery of Mendel’s laws of inheritance at the beginning of the twentieth century ushered in a paradigm shift in anthropology, which placed in question prior comparative anatomical studies of race. Pöch belonged to the generation of physical anthropologists that reopened the discussion of racial anthropology. This new approach evolved against the background of complex developments in society, politics, and the humanities in Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century, shaped by nationalist movements and debates on the nation-state, national character, and “racial theories.” In Central Europe the debate about race was to a large extent initiated by Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), a Vienna-based advocate of “racial purity” who, as the Nazi racial theorist Hans F. G. Günther (1891–1968) later attested, “introduced racial thought to broad sections of the public for the first time.”4 The First “Racial” Anthropological Project in Vienna At the turn of the twentieth century, “modern biology” increasingly focused on the theory of inheritance,5 while anthropology emphasized the “research of cause” rather than “research of facts.”6 Leading theoreticians of the discipline, including Eugen Fischer (1874–1967) and Erwin Baur (1875–1933), defined anthropology as the science of genetic differences in man.7 The concept of race became inheritanceorientated and it was assumed that “physical and psychological racial traits” were due to genetic factors, while “racial formation,” “racial reshaping,” “bastardization,” and the identification of the different components comprising the mix of “hypothetically pure races” became major research topics.8 The physician, anthropologist and ethnographer Rudolf Pöch was an early supporter of the genetic approach. The anthropologist Josef Weninger (1886–1959), one of Pöch’s students and associates, supported Pöch’s biological approach at a time when anthropology provided little information about genetics. According to Weninger, Pöch delivered a “rather portentous lecture” on the biology of the human race in 1912, which focused on questions of racial hygiene.9 In this respect, and in the light of recently discovered documentary evidence, a new investigation is required to explore whether Pöch, a member of the Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene (German Society for Racial Hygiene) from 1906, paved the way for the development of racial hygiene in Austria. Evidence suggests, inter alia, that Pöch was part of a national and international network of anthropologists, anatomists, ethnologists and politicians that included Felix von Luschan (1854–1924); Rudolf Martin (1864–1925); Viktor Adler (1852–1918); Julius Tandler (1869– 1936); Emil Zuckerkandl (1849–1910); Carl Toldt (1840–1920); and in particular Richard Thurnwald (1869–1954), the co-editor, with Alfred Ploetz (1860–1940), of the Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiolo56 “Blood and Homeland” gie (Journal for Racial and Social Biology).10 Pöch’s circle of friends included Richard Fröhlich (1864–1926) and Rudolf Wlassak (1865– 1930), as well as notable exponents of the “anti-alcohol” movement. Following the publication of Eugen Fischer’s Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen (The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Bastardization in Mankind) in 1913, the German anthropological community focused on questions of “racial biology” with...