The power of knowledge : race science , race policy , and the Holocaust JAY WEINSTEIN and NICO STEHR

From the beginning of the scienti® c revolution, scientists, philosophers, and laypersons have been concerned about the eå ects of knowledge on social relations. Although views diå er about the details of this knowledge± society interface, most observers have understood that the kind of knowledge that emanates from established science can indeed be quite powerful in practice. In exploring both the nature of race science discourse and selected features of the practical context withinwhich it resonates eå ectively, the authors ’ investigations of this ® eld and its contribution to the Holocaust represent an eå ort to specify some of the things that make knowledge powerful. No court will ever sit where the judges will sentence choice specimens of humanity to frequent parenthood and condemn the rest to sterility; though the outcome of such an experiment would undoubtedlybe interesting. (Edward M. East, 1929, p. 22) I really must warn my Jewish fellow citizens that they ought not to get the wind up as soon as any one begins to speak of the Jewish race. This inevitably arouses the impression that they must have some reason for ® ghting shy of exposition of any racial questions.Yet a tranquil and objective discussion of the Jewish problem would best serve the true interests of both sides. Fritz Lenz (in Baur et al., 1931, p. 674 [1921]). The early proponents of race science (Rassenwissenschaft) clearly recognized and boldly proclaimed the novel intellectual perspective and eminently practical nature of their work. In 1921, citing the views of the ` Nordic thinker Kant ’ in support of his argument, Fritz Lenz, Professor of Racial Hygiene at the University of Munich, maintained that the ® eld’ s ` outlook is fundamentally new, [it] is something to which the old classi® cations and catchwords are inapplicable; and in its essential nature it is not pessimistic, for it, alone, points the ways towards the sanitation and stable advance of mankind and human civilization’ (Baur et al., 1931, p. 698 [1921], emphasis added). " The practical science to which Lenz refers, and to which he and his academic colleagues contributed signi® cantly, emerged in Germany, other parts of Europe, and the USA, during the World War I era. As the international ® eld of race science Social Epistemology ISSN 0269± 1728 print} ISSN 1469± 5297 online ’ 1999 Taylor & Francis Ltd http:} } www.tandf.co.uk} JNLS} sep.htm http:} } www.taylorandfrancis.com } JNLS} sep.htm 4 jay weinsteinand nico stehr developed through the 1920s, its practitioners both contributed to and were in ̄ uenced by a general shift in Western culture from a religious to a quasi-objective, racial anti-Semitism. This paper seeks to advance our understanding of one of the most consequential aspects of this shift, the linkage between race science, race policies, and the Holocaust. In the course of this discussion, the authors brie ̄ y review the history of the race concept from its roots in evolutionary theory to its re® nement in the works of the leading race scientists of the era, especiallyLenz, Eugen Fischer, and their immediate associates. In addition, the authors examine the linkages between racial explanations and the closely-related climate-based theories of geographers and social psychologists working in the same period. By expanding the scope of our investigation in this manner, we are able to forge what the authors believe is a more complete account of the manner in which Nazi policies of racial hygiene were formulated. That is, they were based not on ignorant prejudice or on the paranoid delusions of amadman, but rather on the ® ndings of what was at the time considered to be rigorous and authentic scienti® c research conducted by highly respected professional scientists. Thus, the authors seek to demonstrate that the Holocaust was, to a considerable extent, scienti® cally ` justi® ed’ # The mutual impacts between race science and race policy, and the manner in which these in turn contributed to the pursuit of statesponsored genocide, provides what the authors believe to be an especially clear, not to mention disturbing, illustration of the kinds of conditions under which knowledge is power, or power is knowledge. $ In light of recent revelations that for several decades the government of Sweden sterilized thousands of ` useless ’ citizens (Balz, 1997), it is evident that the impulse to employ science to justify the abuse of human rights remains diæ cult to resist (for an earlier account, see Freiburg, 1993). 1. From the sacred to the scienti® c The long-standing legacy of anti-Semitism in Western culture contributed significantly to the rise of National Socialism in Weimar Germany, and to the conditions that made possible the slaughter of Jews during the years of Hitler’ s fascism.% The historian Heinrich Treitschke’ s slogan, ` Die Juden sind unser UngluX ck ’ (the Jews are our misfortune), that later appeared on the masthead of Julius Streicher’ s notorious anti-Semitic rag Der StuX rmer, methodically summarized this connection by providing : (1) a readily comprehensible diagnosis of the cause of Germany’ s post-World War I material and spiritual malaise ; and (2) an implied therapyÐ i.e. to create a Jew-free or Jew-cleansed (judenfreie, judenreine) nationÐ a therapy that was, in fact, ultimately put into practice. It is equally evident, however, that the eå ective execution of the judenrein policy depended upon the development of a clear, readily applicable and practical standard whereby individuals could be reliably assigned to the categories Jew and non-Jew, an operational de® nition, so to speak, of those who were (and were not) agents of Germany’ s ` UngluX ck ’ . As inscribed and explicated in the ` Nuremberg Laws ’ of 1935, the solution came via the invocation of hereditary principles elaborated in biological discourse, whereby people were categorized on the basis of the racial identity of their ancestors & It has been widely observed that this standard represents a signi® cant departure from traditional forms of anti-Semitism (see for example Katz, 1980 ; Gilman, 1996, ch. 2). ’ the power of knowledge 5 For nearly twomillennia the Jews of Europe had been viewed as ` diå erent ’ (marginals, outsiders, and in many instances pariahs) because they refused to accept Christ as their Messiah and, according to Church doctrine belatedly revoked in 1968, because they were responsible for the Saviour’ s death. Although these beliefs and the exclusionary practices based on them made life diæ cult for Jews, they also allowed for the possibility of exculpation through conversion. Moreover, since even a Jewish mother and father could produce a Christian child, the religion of one’ s parents was not necessarily grounds for exclusion, persecution, or execution. ` The world without Jews ’ envisioned byEuropean Christiansprior toWorld War I was one inwhichall former Jews will have joined the faithÐ or, as in Karl Marx’ s (1960 [1844]) secularized formulation, will have stopped behaving ` like Jews ’ . The religious motives and rationale for the special treatment of Jews re ̄ ected the medieval world view in which human aå airs generally (and natural events as well) were primarily interpreted and managed in spiritual terms. The Jewish problem was posed as a matter of erroneous belief that, like other sins, could be corrected through confession, repentance, and related spiritual conduct. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, natural science’ s growing distancing from and challenges to Church doctrine, which began centuries earlier and had more recently been expressed in biological enquiry via the quickly popularized Darwinian Revolution, was extended to the relations between Christians and Jews. Thus, these intellectual transformations ultimately contributed to a kind of secularization (or, more accurately, ` scienti® cation’ ) of the relations between Jews and Christians. By the early Weimar Republic, indeed not only in Germany but throughout the Christian world,( it was not uncommon to de® ne a Jew as anyone who belonged to the Jewish ` race ’ and, by virtue of immutable biological lawsÐ explicated, for example, by Mendel and by Galton (1962 [1892]), could produce only Jewish oå spring. As evidenced by the growing concern with measuring physiognomy for classi® catory purposes and other reasons (Efron, 1994), this conception implied that Jews could be identi® ed in terms of anthropometric indicesÐ especially nose length, size of ears, head shape, skull capacity, shape of face, inclination of the brow, degree of prognathism, and foot shape (Gilman, 1991). In this manner, religious, intellectual, or ` cognitive ’ antiSemitismcame to be increasingly displaced (although obviously never entirely replaced) by racial anti-Semitism. ) It follows from the racial concept that the objectionable ways of the Jews, because they are lodged in the blood, are beyond repair by mere ` cultural therapies ’ . A more ` material ’ , more objective and quanti® able criterion now diå erentiated human groups. In this respect, a judenfreie nation (or continent or world) means the physical exclusion or elimination of an entire gene pool. This dramatic shift from religious to biological anti-Semitism is one of the elements that sets theHolocaust apart from earlier instances of Jewish persecution and genocide ;* for it automatically condemned the religious and the irreligious, the orthodox and the convert, and the dead, the living, and the unborn to a common fate." ! The slaughter that occurred during the Holocaust was thus, in part, the result of the prevailing de® nitions of the intended victims, de® nitions that were now cast in categorical and inalterable ` scienti® c ’ terms. Although the astounding scale that was achieved was also very much a function of the applicationof bureaucratic procedures andmass-production techniques to the task at hand, in the context of a totalitarian regime. " " Moreover, since the ` problem ’ was now viewed as one of heredity rather than creedÐ racial degeneracy not false beliefÐ it became possible to subject other perceived enemies of the Reich to similar treatment as Entartete Rassen(degenerate races), even 6 jay weinsteinand nico stehr those such as Slavs, Romani, and Sinti who are oæ cially Christian (Burleigh and Wippermann, 1991, Ch. 5). " # By equating the concept of Volk, one of whose de® nitions is ` race ’ in the pre-Darwinian sense, with Rasse, the Nazis were able to claim all Aryans asHerrenvolk (a master race) even if they were not especially exemplary Christians in the traditional sense. The situation is summarized succinctly in the section on ` Racism and anti-Semitism in Germany ’ in the Yad Vashem Guidebook (1995, pp. 13± 14) : Racismaddednewand substantialdimensionsto traditional anti-Semitism.In the past, hatred of Jews had had speci® c grounds and certain lines of development.The hatred nurtured by ancientChristian conceptsregarded the Jews as thepeople of Israel and the people of theMessiah, but also as the people who had rejected its Redeemer, Jesus, and thus had condemned itself to ostracism and the eternal enmity of the Christian world. The Jew had to be kept in a state of servitude,misery, and degradation. Moreover, their eternal wandering among the nations forever at the mercy of the Christians, seemed to con® rm the veracity of Christian teachings.Later, anti-Semitismwas reinforced by a greater stress on economic, social and political factors. Racial anti-Semitism, linked with a misinterpretation of Darwin’ s views of society lenta newvalidity to traditional Jew-hatred.According toNazi theorists, the danger arising from contact from the evil, perverted Jews, sprang not from their mistaken beliefs or their economic role, nor even from their tendency to live as a closed social group, but from their very identity, their tainted Jewish blood. 2. Rassenwissenschaft as practical knowledge Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum (1993, p. 31) notes that : under Nazism eugenics became national policy. So-called racial sciences were taught in the universities.The teaching of medicine,biology, history, anthropology, and sociology was perverted to support the pseudo-science of racial theory. The Nazi regime eventually established thirty-three university and research institutions, eighteen university professorships, and four research divisions within the Reich Health Oæ ces dedicated to ` racial hygiene ’ . The Nazi-appointed rector of the University of Berlin (a veterinarian andmember of the storm troopers [i.e. Eugen Fischer]) introduced twenty-® ve courses in ` racial science’ into the curriculum." $ The granting of scienti® c legitimacy to the concept of race and its use in explaining a group’ s beliefs and behaviour were (and remain) essential prerequisites to the legalization and promotion of eugenics and euthanasia. Such practices, in combination with hierarchical principles adapted directly from Darwin’ s discussion of speciation, to the eå ect that some species (and thus races) are well-developed whereas others are degenerate, " % turned the practice of state-sponsored genocide into a modern technological undertaking (Horowitz, 1980). In this sense, race science in Nazi Germany was ® rst and foremost a policy science or a form of practical knowledge (Stehr, 1992). Although Berenbaum refers as noted to Rassenwissenschaft as pseudo-science, there is good reason to resist such labels." & Race science, and in particular the view that race is the cause of mental and behavioural traits, had by the early 1900s gained considerable scholarly legitimacy in Germany and throughout Europe and North America. The writings of Herbert Spencer (1862) and, especially, Arthur de Gobineau (1915) " ’ had begun to in ̄ uence academic and popular thinking along these lines decades before the publication of Houston S. Chamberlain’ s 1968 [1900] landmark work on racial diå erences (Biddis, 1970). Whereas the line of enquiry may have been thoroughly discredited, in one form or another, racial explanations still prevail in several quarters of the contemporary academic establishment (Barkan, 1992). The race scientists of Germany and other countries, especially if we augment the categoryÐ as the authors are suggestingÐ to include the writings of climate determinists the power of knowledge 7 of the same era, managed to produce an enormous body of literature. Although there is a selective lack of data to substantiate certain claims, as well as immense leaps of faith in interpreting some of the information gathered, theseworks all aspired to be rigorously ` scienti® c ’ and to be critically judged by the accepted scholarly standards of the day. In their attempts to amass volumes of quantitative evidence to illustrate and justify their theories, these scholars saw their work as leading-edge science. Indeed, at ® rst glance, the works of race scientists and climate determinists contain an imposing range of evidence : naturalistic, experimental, and survey-based. The level of discourse is sophisticated, the arguments apparently conform or endeavour to be close to the thenprevailing logic of science, and the conclusions that are drawn seem to be sound. Any serious criticism that is demanded of the ® eld, so it seems, must at least meet the same standards. This is not the racism and anti-Semitism of the beer hall ; it is indeed scienceÐ of a sort, and it was widely interpreted to represent the best in modern