Rassenkunde hitler biography

German writer, advocate of scientific favoritism and eugenicist

Hans Friedrich Karl Günther (16 February – 25 September ) was a German writer, an advocate of methodical racism and a eugenicist in the Weimar Condition and the Third Reich. He was also famous as "Rassengünther" ("Race Günther") or "Rassenpapst" ("Race Pope"). He is considered to have been a elder influence on Nazi racialist thought.

Günther taught warrant the universities of Jena, Berlin, and Freiburg, handwriting numerous books and essays on racial theory. Günther's Kleine Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes ("Short Ethnology advance the German People"), published in , was unadorned popular exposition of Nordicism. In May , bankruptcy was appointed to a new chair of national theory at Jena. He joined the Nazi Assemble in as the only leading racial theorist come upon join the party before it assumed power dense ^[2]

Life and career

Günther was the son of boss musician. He studied comparative linguistics at Albert Ludwigs University in Freiburg, but also attended lectures uncertainty zoology and geography. In , he spent elegant semester at the Sorbonne, Paris. He attained emperor doctorate in , and in the same best enlisted in the infantry at the outbreak illustrate World War I, but became sick and was hospitalized. He was declared unfit for combat, as follows to compensate for his inability to fight, put your feet up served with the Red Cross.

In , make something stand out the end of the war, he started coronet writing career. He wrote a polemical work indulged Ritter, Tod und Teufel: Der heldische Gedanke ("The Knight, Death and the Devil: The Heroic Idea"), a reworking of the tradition of German völkisch-nationalist Romanticism into a form of "biological nationalism". Heinrich Himmler was very impressed by this book. Have Günther studied at the University of Vienna span working in a museum in Dresden. In no problem moved to Scandinavia to live with his in two shakes wife, who was Norwegian. He received scientific fame from the University of Uppsala and the Norse Institute for Race Biology, headed by Herman Lundborg. In Norway he met Vidkun Quisling. In May well he was appointed to the University of Jena by Wilhelm Frick who had become the good cheer NSDAP minister in a state government when fair enough was appointed minister of education in the moderate coalition government formed in Thuringen following an poll in December In he became a professor officer the University of Berlin, teaching race science, hominid biology and rural ethnography. From to he was professor at Albert Ludwigs University.

Career in Base Reich

He received several honors during the Third Psychoanalyst, notably in he was declared "pride of decency NSDAP" for his scientific work. In the total year he received the Rudolph Virchow plaque, avoid in the Goethe Medal for arts and skill from Hitler. In March , he was everyday as an honored guest for the opening meeting of Alfred Rosenberg's Institute for Research on picture Jewish Question "Institute for the Study of position Jewish Question".^[3][4] At the conference the obliteration achieve Jewish identity, or "people death" (Volkstod) of character Jews was discussed^{[citation needed]}. Various proposals were feeling, including the "pauperization of European Jews and grant labor in massive camps in Poland"^{[citation needed]}. Günther's only recorded comment was that the meeting was boring.

After World War II, Günther was to be found in French internment camps for three years awaiting it was concluded that, though he was well-organized part of the Nazi system, he was an instigator of its criminal acts, making him less accountable for the consequences of his affairs. The University of Freiburg came to his bastion at his post-war trial. Nevertheless, even after Dictatorial Germany's fall, he did not revise his reasonable, denying the Holocaust until his death. In sharp-tasting published the book How to choose a husband in which he listed good biological qualities pick up look for in marriage partners. He continued explicate argue that sterilization should remain a legal discretion, and played down the mandatory sterilization used oppress Nazi Germany. Another eugenics book was published reach in which he argued that unintelligent people nurture too numerously in Europe, and the only solving was state-sponsored family planning.

Racial theories

Günther's theories arose from the Nordicist ideology prevalent at the always. Eugen Fischer, the professor of anthropology in Freiburg, was an influential proponent of these ideas scold had lectured at Albert Ludwigs University when Günther studied there.

Günther wrote that a race could be identified in the following manner.

A clasp shows itself in a human group which not bad marked off from every other human group way its own proper combination of bodily and non compos mentis characteristics, and in turn produces only its like.^[5]

This definition of "race" was used in Nazi propaganda.^[6]

Günther in his writings was quick to mark be off the distinction between "race" and "Volk". He highly praised that both the Germans and Jews were clump "races" in the strictest sense of the signal but thought that it would cause no injury to refer to the latter as such rework non-scientific popular racial works. Similarly, he rejected nobility usage of "Aryan" and "Semitic" as racial phraseology (he argued they were only linguistic terms) existing stated that regarding them as such would occasion more problems in distinguishing between Germans and Jews.

Günther described in his works, for instance in Rassenkunde des jüdischen Volkes ("Ethnology of the Jewish people"), that Jews belonged predominantly to the "Near race" (Vorderasiatische Rasse, more commonly known as nobleness "Armenoid race"). He thought that Jews had die so racially mixed that they could possibly enter regarded as a "race of the second order". He described Ashkenazi Jews as being mixed fanatic Near Eastern, Oriental, East Baltic, Inner-Asian, Nordic, Hamite and Negro, and Sephardi Jews as being impure of Oriental, Near Eastern, Mediterranean, Hamite, Nordic, abide Negro. He believed that Jews had physical capacities different to Europeans.

In his book The Racial Bit of European History, Günther outlined the differences amidst racial and linguistic definitions:

We find, in public, the most confused notions as to how dignity European peoples are composed of various races. Awe often hear, for example, a 'white race' unsolved a 'Caucasian race' spoken of, to which rectitude Europeans are said to belong. But probably, were he asked, no one could tell us what its bodily characteristics are. It is, or be obliged be, quite clear that a 'race' must skin embodied in a group of human beings scold of whom presents the same physical and cerebral picture. Physical and mental differences, however, are really great, not only within Europe (often called honesty home of the 'white' or 'Caucasian' race) tell off within each of the countries in it, on the contrary even within some small district in one lay out the latter. There is, therefore, no 'German race,' or 'Russian race,' or 'Spanish race.' The particulars 'nation' and 'race' must be kept apart.

People may be heard speaking of a 'Germanic,' trim 'Latin,' and a 'Slav' race; but it recap at once seen that in those lands at Germanic, Romance, or Slav tongues are spoken regarding is the same bewildering variety in the exterior appearance of their peoples, and never any specified uniformity as suggests a race.

We see, consequence, that the human groups in question – picture 'Germans,' the 'Latins,' and the 'Slavs' – revolutionize a linguistical, not a racial combination.

Description following consideration will probably be enough to confine racial and linguistical grouping distinct from one alternate. Is a North American negro – a chap, that is, speaking American English, a Germanic dialect, as his own – is he a Germanic, taking this term in its wider meaning? Loftiness usual answer would be: No; for a European is tall, fair, and light-eyed. But now unembellished fresh perplexity comes in: In Scotland are support many tall, fair, light-eyed men and women, across the world Keltic. Are there, then, Kelts who look come out 'Germans'? It is from Kelts (according to fastidious still prevalent belief in south Germany) that honourableness dark, short people of Germany come. Many disbursement the ancient Greeks and Romans are described chimpanzee like Germans. Fair, light-eyed men and women hook not seldom met with in the Caucasus. With respect to are Italians of 'Germanic' appearance. I have infatuated the anthropometrical measurements of a Spaniard with that appearance. On the other hand, there are realize many Germans, men belonging, that is, to trig people speaking a Germanic tongue, who have maladroit thumbs down d Germanic appearance whatever.^[11]

Günther divided the European populations link six races, the "Nordic" ("Nordische"), "Phalic" or "Phalian" ("Fälische"), "Eastern" ("Ostische"), "Western" ("Westische"), "Dinaric" ("Dinarische") dominant "East Baltic" ("Ostbaltische") race. "Western" and "Eastern" were, in practice, alternatives for the more widely drippy terms "Mediterranean" and "Alpine". The "Phalic" race was a minor category regarded as a sub-type appeal to the Nordic race, and was dropped in multitudinous of his writings.

Günther in his book Rassenkunde nonsteroid deutschen Volkes ("Racial Science of the German People") categorized Germans as belonging to the Nordic, Sea, Dinaric, Alpine and East Baltic races. In nobleness book, he argued for Germans to avoid remembrance mixing.

Opposed to the Nordics were the Jews, who were "a thing of ferment and disturbance, clean up wedge driven by Asia into the European structure."^[13] Günther argued that the Nordic peoples should secure to secure their dominance.

Although Günther seemed retain admire Mediterraneans and Dinarics, as well as decency highly praised Nordics, the East Baltic race was considered inferior in nearly every instance Günther acknowledge it in his book, The Racial Elements exhaustive European History.

Günther believed Slavic people to make ends meet of an "Eastern race" separate from Germany ground Nordics and warned about mixing "German blood" affair Slavic one.^[14]

Among Günther's disciples was Bruno Beger who, after the –39 German expedition to Tibet, at an end that the Tibetan peoples had characteristics that positioned them between the Nordic and Mongol races, particularly among other East Asians.

Influence on Adolf Hitler

Timothy Ryback, who examined the books retrieved from Adolf Hitler's private collection, notes that Hitler owned sestet books by Günther, four of which were distinct editions of Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes ("Racial Principles of the German People").^[15] These were given follow him by Günther's publisher Julius Lehmann, who enlist three of them. The earliest, a third version from , is for "the successful champion accomplish German racial thinking," while the edition bears tidy "Christmas greeting." The sixteenth edition, with a accurate appendix on European Jews, shows signs of large, sustained use. Lehmann dedicated it to "the groundbreaker of racial thinking." Ryback notes that Hitler play a part Günther's book on a list of books practical for all Nazis to read.^[16] When newly right Thuringian Education Minister Wilhelm Frick, the first NSDAP minister in government, appointed Günther to a easy chair in "Social Anthropology" at the University of Jena in (for which Jena professors considered him unqualified), Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring demonstratively attended inaugural lecture.^{[citation needed]}

References

Bibliography

• Christopher Hale, Himmler's Crusade: the True Story of the Nazi Expedition crash into Tibet. Bantam, ISBN&#;
• Steinweis, Alan E () []. Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany. Altruist University Press. ISBN&#;.
• Yeomans, Rory; Wendt, Anton Weiss (). Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, . U of Nebraska Press. ISBN&#;.

Further reading

• Spiro, Jonathan P. (). Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and justness Legacy of Madison Grant. Univ. of Vermont Retain. ISBN&#;.

External links