Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics

Coordinates: 52°26′56″N 13°16′39″E / 52.44889°N 13.27750°E / 52.44889; 13.27750
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Racial Hygiene, at the Free University of Berlin
University of Berlin
1934

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was 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

Josef Mengele in 1956

In its early years, and during the

Otmar von Verschuer
.

Young Rhinelander who was classified as a bastard and hereditarily unfit under the Nazi regime

In the years of 1937–1938, Fischer and his colleagues analysed 600 children in

Rhineland Bastards, were subsequently subjected to sterilization.[1]

Fischer did not officially join the

Nuremberg laws.[4]

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

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.

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.[5][6][7]

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.[8]

See also

References

  1. OCLC 61879724.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link
    )
  2. ISBN 0202020339
    , 9780202020334.
  3. ISBN 978-1626600003
    .
  4. ISBN 0-300-08432-3
    .
  5. ^ "Repatriation of Skulls from Namibia University of Freiburg hands over human remains in ceremony". 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-04-03.
  6. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: Namibia Press Agency (7 March 2014). "NAMPA: WHK skulls repatriated to Namibia 07 March 2014" – via YouTube.
  7. ^ "Germany to send back 35 skulls". newera.com.na. 28 February 2014.
  8. ^ Black, Edwin (9 November 2003). "Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection". San Francisco Chronicle. SFGate.com. Retrieved 20 November 2013.

Further reading

52°26′56″N 13°16′39″E / 52.44889°N 13.27750°E / 52.44889; 13.27750

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