Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945

Racial Expertise and German Eugenic Strategies for Southeastern Europe

28 Paul Weindling and class appeared to be more important than power politics as determinants of power relations in Imperial Germany. In this context, a new interest arose in the politics of German public health and population policy before 1945. This reversed an earlier, wholly positive view on the development of German social welfare and public health provision—following the introduction of sickness insurance under Bismarck in 1883—as benign and inclusive. Eugenics, as linked to public health and population policy, was interpreted as a means for resolving socio-political tensions in Imperial Germany that arose from social deprivation, economic inequalities and rapid industrialization. World War I saw the family, reproduction and sexuality move to the center of state policy. The Weimar Republic’s welfare state focused on reproductive controls for the eugenically “unfit” in addition to incentives for “child rich” families. The eugenic welfare state rapidly gave way to the Nazi “racial state”, with selective welfare benefits for racially elite groups and the later extermination of the racially undesirable from 1939. In the postwar period of “the two Germanies,” family politics remained center stage, albeit with a contrast between the conservative moral frame of Adenauer’s Federal Republic and the socialist focus on youth sexuality—and having children young while working—in the German Democratic Republic. Generally speaking, the study of the history of eugenics was transferred across to Germany from studies of Anglo-American Social Darwinism and eugenics. Social interests in scientific knowledge—indeed, the social construction of that knowledge base—and in professional power were key issues. By the 1970s, historians became interested in civil rights for the oppressed and in gender politics. By contrast, German historians were interested in issues like mass political mobilization or the corporate interests of the military, industry and labor, meaning that the role of professional power and the knowledge base of the industrializing economy appeared very marginal to them. In 1983, I demonstrated the process by which eugenic policies permeated state public health in Prussia between 1905 and 1933.2 Yet only in the early 1990s did readings of Michel Foucault 2 Paul Weindling, “Die Preussische Medizinalverwaltung und die ‘Rassenhygiene’,” in A. Thom and H. Spaar, eds., Medizin und Faschismus, new edn. (Berlin: Verlag Volk und Gesundheit, 1985), 48–56. Extended version published as “Die Preussische Medizinalverwaltung und die ‘Rassenhygiene’. Anmerkungen zur Gesundheitspolitik der Jahre 1905–1933,” Zeitschrift für Sozialreform, 30 (1984): 675–687. 29 Racial Expertise and German Eugenic Strategies for Southeastern Europe (taken up by Detlev Peukert) and the critique of state welfare—evident in the work of Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann—fuel writings on “the racial state,” which has now become an accepted paradigm for historical studies of German eugenics.3 The problem, though, remains how to conceptualize and interpret features of German eugenics that fall outside the frame of state social policy—not least the culturally distinctive concerns of German racial scientists. The extent of influence by German eugenics beyond the borders of the Reich remains similarly unresolved. On the one hand, we have the issue of Germany’s place in Southeastern Europe; on the other, that of a threat from the East in terms of “alien races and their diseases.” Whether or not German eugenic models were transferred to ethnic German communities at this time or whether each geographical context was distinctive in terms of differing eugenic models remains an open question. The prevailing kleindeutsch approach is nevertheless too restricted, particularly in its failing to take account of the broader vision of a Greater German racial hygiene regime espoused by its many proponents. Protagonists at the time certainly refused to accept the restrictions of national borders. Here the nation-state as a conventional historical category obscures significant transnational issues, not least the analysis of völkisch national associations and local initiatives in public health provision for Volksdeutsche. These continue essentially to be seen as pressure groups extending Imperial German state policies into the spheres of welfare, physical and mental fitness as well as reproductive health and fertility. Studies of völkisch ideologues, such as of the earlier Pan-German League agitating for imperial expansion, do not adequately allow for the racial-political and scientific networks among German eugenicists.4 We therefore need to look carefully at the place of eugenicists among the politics of mass public health organizations, notably in combating alcoholism, for preventing sexually transmitted diseases and in promoting infant welfare...