International Federation of Eugenics Organizations

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The International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO) was an international organization of groups and individuals focused on

Nazi party
in Germany caused increasing tension within the group and leadership activity declined, it dissolved in the latter half of the 1930s.

History

In 1912,

Clarence Little
, it focused on issues including human heredity, racial differences, regulation of human reproduction, and eugenics.

In 1925, the Committee was renamed the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO).

Zurich,[6] the original IFEO had representative organizations and individuals from Argentina, Belgium, Cuba, the Dutch East Indies, England, Estonia, France, Italy, Germany, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States.[8][9]

The IFEO's emphasis on negative eugenics, in which the unfit are eliminated from society through such measures as

sociologist Corrado Gini established the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations specifically to give a place to organizations fundamentally opposed to the approach.[10][11][12] The Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations had its first meeting in 1935 and soon represented groups from Argentina, Brazil, Catalonia, France, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland (French and Italian). Focused on encouraging reproduction of the "fit", the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations was disrupted by the advent of World War II, its second congress cancelled, but Gini continued to promote positive eugenics until his death in 1965.[13]

The IFEO began to struggle in the 1930s with the increasingly controversial views on Eugenics in

Eugenics Review
, IFEO secretary Mrs. C.B.S. Hodson wrote:

A number of searching questions were exchanged with the different speakers. The Dutch in particular showed hesitancy in accepting the findings of transmissibility in regard to certain diseases as an adequate criterion for sterilization, while those coming from countries such as Switzerland, where the operation is a practical possibility and increasingly practised, found less difficulty in accepting the German point of view. In fact, between those critics who alleged that Germany was going too far and those (notably the French) who suggested that the categories should include more types, the protagonists of the new eugenic era in Germany appear to hold a middle course.

Of the 1936 meeting in the Netherlands, where Hodson indicates the views of Germany was a major focus, she wrote:[7]

it emerged that castration of sex offenders is being widely demanded in Holland, while sterilization is still regarded with distaste and suspicion. Denmark, originally most cautious to avoid compulsion in sterilization, has now made this as well as other regulations for the feeble-minded, compulsory for that category. At the same time administrators in Denmark take the utmost care to use their powers with reserve until public confidence has been built up. Marriage laws are easily promulgated in Scandinavia; in Germany (supposed land of drastic legislation) advisory marriage bureaux are paving the way with careful and paternal help towards legislation, which may be withheld for some time.

The 1936 meeting, hosted in Scheveningen, was attended by 50 delegates from 20 countries.[16] At that meeting, the term of the presidency was limited to four years, whereupon Rüdin was made honorary vice president along with Alfred Ploetz, Darwin and Jon Alfred Mjøen, newly elected.[17] Torsten Sjögren was chosen as his successor after five nominees had refused the office. Under Sjögren's presidency, activity in the IFEO lapsed to the point that the British Eugenics Society, instrumental in founding the group, considered withdrawing.[1][14] According to Stefan Kühl in For the Betterment of the Race (originally Die Internationale der Rassiten 1997), Sjögren was submissive to the Nazi party with their increasingly controversial views on eugenics, which contributed to the disintegration of the organization in the latter half of the 1930s.[12]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f (Bashford & Austin 2010, p. 156)
  2. ^ a b c (Michalik 2012, p. 113)
  3. ^ (Sprinkle 1994, p. 91)
  4. ^ (Nature 1932)
  5. ^ (Yeomans & Weiss-Wendt 2013, p. 39)
  6. ^ a b (Hodson 1934, p. 217)
  7. ^ a b c (Hodson 1936, p. 217)
  8. ^ (Bashford & Austin 2010, p. 157)
  9. ^ a b (Yeomans & Weiss-Wendt 2013, p. 12)
  10. ^ (Bashford & Austin 2010, pp. 389–90)
  11. ^ (Cassata 2011, p. 177)
  12. ^ a b (Kühl 2013, p. 110)
  13. ^ (Bashford & Austin 2010, pp. 391–92)
  14. ^ a b (Kühl 2013, p. 109)
  15. ^ (Hodson 1934, p. 220)
  16. ^ (Nature 1938)
  17. ^ (Hodson 1936, p. 219)

References