Otto Reche
Otto Carl Reche (24 May 1879 – 23 March 1966) was a German anthropologist and professor from
Education and career
Reche was educated at the University of Breslau (now the University of Wrocław), the University of Jena and the University of Berlin.[1]
In his career, Reche served as the director of the Departments of Anthropology at the
Blood type research and conclusions
Reche's work with blood types, involving studies in northwestern Germany, was an attempt to prove a correlation between which blood type a person had and whether they were of German ancestry. He claimed that the three blood types, A, B, and O, were each originally attached to European, Asian, and Native American races, but that interracial marriage had diluted this over the centuries.[2]
Support for the genocide of Poles
Reche justified the invasion of Poland in 1939 in a letter to Albert Brackmann by stating:
we need Raum but no Polish lice on our fur. I am absolutely of the opinion that the racial-scientific side is determinative in the solution of all these questions since we do not want to build a German people in the East in the future that would only be a linguistically germanised, racial mish-mash, with strong asiatic elements, and Polish in character. That would be no German Volk, nor a cornerstone for a German future!...Since I also know the anthropological conditions in Poland and know what is racially and hereditarily useful in this people and what at all events is to be driven out of the German settlement area, I believe I have gathered together in the course of many years several ideas which should now be used for the general good and for our future.[3]
During the
Life after the war
On April 16, 1945, Reche was arrested by American forces for membership in the Nazi Party, but released after sixteen months of detainment.[1]
In 1959, Reche was chosen by a German court investigating the claims of Anna Anderson that she was Anastasia Nikolaevna, a Russian Grand Duchess thought to have been murdered along with the rest of the royal family. He concluded that Anna Anderson was either the Grand Duchess herself or an identical twin.[5] After Anderson's death, however, it was concluded based on DNA evidence that she was not Anastasia.
Reche died near Hamburg in 1966.[1]
See also
References
- ^ ISBN 3-374-02015-1.
- ^ ISBN 0-674-74578-7.
- ISBN 978-1-4438-2368-5.
- ^ Tomasz Ceran, The History of a Forgotten German Camp: Nazi Ideology and Genocide at Szmalcowka, page 40, I.B.Tauris, October 2014
- ISBN 0-86051-807-8.
Further reading
- Arthur L. Caplan, ed. (1992). When Medicine Went Mad: Bioethics and the Holocaust. ISBN 0-89603-235-3.
- Geisenhainer, Katja: "Gescheiterte Interventionen Otto Reche und seine Wiener Nachfolge", in: Andre Gingrich; Peter Rohrbacher (Ed.), Völkerkunde zur NS-Zeit aus Wien (1938–1945): Institutionen, Biographien und Praktiken in Netzwerken (Phil.-hist. Kl., Sitzungsberichte 913; Veröffentlichungen zur Sozialanthropologie 27/1). Wien: Verlag der ÖAW 2021, p. 129–142. doi:10.1553/978OEAW86700
- Neugebauer, Wolfgang. "Racial Hygiene in Vienna 1938". Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes. Archived from the original on 2012-12-21. Retrieved 2007-07-13.