science

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics rather than just read about it. In short: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was a research institute founded in 1927 in Berlin, Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation partially funded the actual building of the Institute and helped keep the Institute afloat during the Great Depression.

Key takeaways

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Reference excerpt

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was a research institute founded in 1927 in Berlin, Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation partially funded the actual building of the Institute and helped keep the Institute afloat during the Great Depression.

Eugenics

In its early years, and during the Nazi era, it was strongly associated with theories of Nazi eugenics and racial hygiene advocated by its leading theorist Fritz Lenz, its first director Eugen Fischer, and its second director Otmar von Verschuer.

In the years of 1937–1938, Fischer and his colleagues analysed 600 children in Nazi Germany descending from French-African soldiers who occupied western areas of Germany after First World War; the children, the so-called Rhineland Bastards, were subsequently subjected to sterilization. Fischer did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1940. However, he was influential with National Socialists early on. Adolf Hitler read his two-volume work, Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene (first published in 1921 and co-written by Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz) while incarcerated in 1923 and used its ideas in Mein Kampf. He also authored The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Miscegenation among Humans (1913) (German: Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen), a field study which provided context for later racial debates, influenced German colonial legislation and provided scientific support for the Nuremberg laws. Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications used to determine racial origins and developed the so-called Fischer–Saller scale. He and his team experimented on Romani people and African-Germans, especially those from Namibia, taking blood and measuring skulls to find scientific validation for his theories. During World War II, the Institute regularly received human body parts, including eyes and skulls, from Nazi party member Karin Magnussen who studied eye colors, and Josef Mengele (at Auschwitz concentration camp) to use in studies intended to prove Nazi racial theories and justify race-related social policies. After the German capitulation in May 1945, most of the thousands of files and lab material of the Institute were moved to an unknown location or destroyed, and never obtained by the Allies to use as evidence in war crimes trials and to prove or disprove the Nazi racial ideology which had motivated mass genocide in Europe. Most of the staff of the Institute were able to escape trial, most notably Mengele who escaped to Brazil, where he died of a stroke while swimming in 1979. Although in 1948 the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed to the Max Planck Society, the KWI of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was so associated with the Nazis that, despite not technically being dissolved, it was never reopened. Efforts to return the Namibian skulls taken by Fischer were started with an investigation by the University of Freiburg in 2011 and completed with the return of the skulls in March 2014 to Namibia.

Funding When confronted with financial demands, the Rockefeller Foundation supported both the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics.

See also Eugenics State Institute for Racial Biology

References

Further reading Papanayotou, Vivi. "Skeletons in the Closet of German Science". Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 20 November 2013. Schmuhl, Hans-Walter (2003). The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, 1927-1945. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Vol. 259. Springer. ISBN 978-1-4020-6599-6.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics

In research: Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Eugenics organizations, Nazi eugenics, Research institutes established in 1927, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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Frequently asked questions

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Why does Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics matter?

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Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

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It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.