Hereditary Health Court

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The image above shows Reichensperger Platz Square which includes the center of operations of the hereditary health court and the higher hereditary health court. Coln a. Rh., Oberlandesgericht Reichensbergerplatz 1910.jpg
The image above shows Reichensperger Platz Square which includes the center of operations of the hereditary health court and the higher hereditary health court.

The Hereditary Health Court (German : Erbgesundheitsgericht, EGG), also known as the Genetic Health Court, was a court that decided whether people should be forcibly sterilized in Nazi Germany. That method of using courts to make decisions on hereditary health in Nazi Germany was created to implement the Nazi race policy aiming for racial hygiene. [1]

Contents

History

German Sterilization Law or Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring

The Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring in Nazi Germany was passed on July 14, 1933, effective January 1934. This law gave rise to the profuse making of the health courts. The Sterilization law permitted complete authority to forcibly sterilize any citizen, who in the opinion of court officials, suffered from genetic disorders, many of which were not actually genetic. When the court outcome was sterilization for the individual in question, the court ruling could be appealed to the Higher Hereditary Health Court (Erbgesundheitsobergericht, EGOG), also known as Hereditary Health Supreme Court. [1] Dr. Karl Astel was in charge of the Hereditary Health Supreme Court from 1934 to 1937. [2] The Hereditary Health Courts were responsible for the sterilization of 400,000 persons in less than a decade of operation. [3]

Structure of the Courts and Decision Making Processes

The Hereditary Health Courts were structured uniquely in comparison to the rest of the Reich judiciary. Each court was chaired by a judge from the local magistrate court alongside two physicians. Additionally, those ordered to be sterilized had the right to appeal their decisions and there were appellate courts specifically created to hear such cases, chaired instead by a judge of the Oberlandesgericht. [4] The courts were not technically independent institutions and were classified as subordinate parts of the local magistrate courts and district appellate courts. The presidents of the district courts also determined the number of deputies and medical staff members at their discretion. [5] : 244–249 

Women in general were not involved in the decision making, even when it most often was directly carried out on them. Sterilizations and abortions (almost no castrations) were common responses to deviancy. [6] This was largely due to the fact that women had very little to no say in the inner circles of decision-making courts. The men making the decisions were often much more sympathetic to the plights of other men.

Nazi officials also tended to offer tax breaks to those families who were hereditarily preferred, encouraging that they produce more offspring. [6] Usually it was a mix of unemployment, family balance, and social welfare that were considered for appropriate approaches.

The activities of the higher (appellate) Hereditary Health Courts were suspended in November of 1944 by order of the Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War. [5] : 249–250 

Influence of American Eugenics on Nazi Race Policy

The Nazi authority assigned the nickname "model U.S." to America for playing a prominent role in constructing their policy on race in Germany. Eugenicists in the United States were aware and very pleased at having influenced Nazi legislation. The German Sterilization Law was affected by the California sterilization law and modelled after the Model Eugenic Sterilization Law but was more moderate. The Model Eugenic Sterilization Law required people who were mentally retarded, insane, criminal, epileptic, inebriated, diseased, blind, deaf, deformed, and economically vulnerable to be sterilized. On the other hand, the German law called for sterilization in cases of mental retardation, schizophrenia, manic-depression, insanity, hereditary epilepsy, hereditary blindness, deafness, malformation, and Huntington's chorea. [1]

American Eugenicists' Prominence in Nazi Germany

Some respondents were described by Lothrop Stoddard, an American eugenicist, visiting the Nazi state in 1939. That day were tried an 'apelike man' who had married a Jewish woman, a manic depressive, a deaf and mute girl, and a 'mentally retarded' girl. [7] After being witness to the trials, he reported the Sterilization Law was being carried out with strict provisions and that the judges of the Hereditary Health Courts were almost too conservative. He reported on his experience with extreme support for the Hereditary Health Court, and went as far to say that the Nazi's were "weeding out the worst strains in the Germanic stock in a scientific and truly humanitarian way". [1]

The Hereditary Health Court in Nazi Germany is evidence that Nazi Germany's eugenic program was the most successful in implementing racial policies and eugenic ideals. More specifically, as Lothrop Stoddard stated after his visit to Germany in 1940, "Nazi Germany's eugenic program is the most ambitious and far-reaching experiment in eugenics ever attempted by any nation". Many eugenicists initially thought that the campaign in Nazi Germany would boost the influence of eugenics in the U.S. as well. With this in mind, leading philanthropic organizations in the U.S. gave generously to support Nazi research in this area. [6] The eugenic laws were able to flourish in Nazi Germany because of the efficiency of their legislative model, which included the Hereditary Health Court. [1] A 1939 book authored by Von Hoffman and titled Racial hygiene in the United States has a whole sterilization chapter that was widely regarded with approval in the early development of the health courts. [8]

Nazi testing for racial hygiene was also directly influenced by the earlier American eugenics work. Harry Laughlin was known as one of the most influential American eugenicists on sterilization law in Germany. His book Human Selection had a "model Sterilization Law" that was used as a model for the guidelines of sterilization in the courts. [8]

A rather unexpected and interesting fact regarding the Hereditary Health Courts in Nazi Germany is that the Nazi race and health administrators gave American eugenicists access to multiple institutions involved in the eugenics movement, which included visits to the Hereditary Health Courts. This access surprisingly had positive influences on the promotion of the Hereditary Health Courts. William W. Peter, an American Eugenicist who visited Nazi Germany, believed that the Hereditary Health Courts were essential in guaranteeing the correct application of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. [1]

Marie E. Kopp, who was an American eugenicist that visited Germany for six months in 1935, was given the opportunity to interview judges of the Hereditary Health Courts. She published various speeches and articles and was convinced that the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring was implemented fairly, in part because of her familiarity with the processes and proceedings of the Hereditary Health Courts. [1]

Evidence regarding the supposed fairness of the application of the law is provided through facts relating to the sterilization process when deemed necessary by the Hereditary Health Courts. According to Kopp, there were no adverse health effects from properly performed sterilization operations. Apparently, 0.4 percent of all the women who underwent sterilization died during the operation. This would mean that a total of 4,500 women died while undergoing a sterilization operation which judges of the Hereditary Health Court ordered them to receive. [1]

Sterilization in Nazi Germany Compared to Sterilization in Other Countries

Sterilizing disables the sex organs of the individual, making it impossible to reproduce. Procreation became a privilege because only authorized individuals were allowed to produce offspring—their characteristics were considered specifically desirable. Although sterilization in the United States was more limited than it was in Germany, German racial hygienists highlighted that sterilization practices in some areas of the United States were more extreme than those in Nazi Germany. [1]

The International Federation of Eugenics Organizations held a conference in the Netherlands in 1936. Although Germany had the largest number of attendees, there were also representatives from the United States, Denmark, England, Sweden, Latvia, Norway, Estonia, France, and the Netherlands. When applied eugenics were discussed, the Nazi race policies presented by the German racial hygienists once again dominated. [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenics</span> Aim to improve perceived human genetic quality

Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter human gene pools by excluding people and groups judged to be inferior or promoting those judged to be superior. In recent years, the term has seen a revival in bioethical discussions on the usage of new technologies such as CRISPR and genetic screening, with heated debate around whether these technologies should be considered eugenics or not.

Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), is a decision of the United States Supreme Court, written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in which the Court ruled that a state statute permitting compulsory sterilization of the unfit, including the intellectually disabled, "for the protection and health of the state" did not violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Despite the changing attitudes in the coming decades regarding sterilization, the Supreme Court has never expressly overturned Buck v. Bell. It is widely believed to have been weakened by Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), which involved compulsory sterilization of male habitual criminals. Legal scholar and Holmes biographer G. Edward White, in fact, wrote, "the Supreme Court has distinguished the case [Buck v. Bell] out of existence". In addition, federal statutes, including the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, provide protections for people with disabilities, defined as both physical and mental impairments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial hygiene</span> Efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal breeder seeking purebred animals

The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany. It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an animal breeder seeking purebred animals. This was often motivated by the belief in the existence of a racial hierarchy and the related fear that "lower races" would "contaminate" a "higher" one. As with most eugenicists at the time, racial hygienists believed that the lack of eugenics would lead to rapid social degeneration, the decline of civilization by the spread of inferior characteristics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carrie Buck</span> American Supreme Court case plaintiff

Carrie Elizabeth Buck was the plaintiff in the United States Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell, after having been ordered to undergo compulsory sterilization for purportedly being "feeble-minded" by her foster parents after their nephew raped and impregnated her. She had given birth to an illegitimate child without the means to support it. The surgery, carried out while Buck was an inmate of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, took place under the authority of the Sterilization Act of 1924, part of the Commonwealth of Virginia's eugenics program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry H. Laughlin</span> American eugenicist (1880–1943)

Harry Hamilton Laughlin was an American educator and eugenicist. He served as the superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception in 1910 to its closure in 1939, and was among the most active individuals influencing American eugenics policy, especially compulsory sterilization legislation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernst Rüdin</span> Swiss-born German geneticist

Ernst Rüdin was a Swiss-born German psychiatrist, geneticist, eugenicist and Nazi, rising to prominence under Emil Kraepelin and assuming the directorship at the German Institute for Psychiatric Research in Munich. While he has been credited as a pioneer of psychiatric inheritance studies, he also argued for, designed, justified and funded the mass sterilization and clinical killing of adults and children.

Eugenics has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally brought to Japan through the United States, through Mendelian inheritance by way of German influences, and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenics as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th, in Jinsei-Der Mensch, the first eugenics journal in the Empire. As the Japanese sought to close ranks with the West, this practice was adopted wholesale, along with colonialism and its justifications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">German Society for Racial Hygiene</span> German eugenic organization

The German Society for Racial Hygiene was a German eugenic organization founded on 22 June 1905 by the physician Alfred Ploetz in Berlin. Its goal was "for society to return to a healthy and blooming, strong and beautiful life" as Ploetz put it. The Nordic race was supposed to regain its "purity" through selective reproduction and sterilization. The society became defunct after World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nazi eugenics</span> Nazi German policy of the murder of "undesirable" persons from the German people

Nazi eugenics refers to the social policies of eugenics in Nazi Germany, composed of various ideas about genetics. The racial ideology of Nazism placed the biological improvement of the German people by selective breeding of "Nordic" or "Aryan" traits at its center. These policies were used to justify the involuntary sterilization and mass-murder of those deemed "undesirable".

Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring or "Sterilisation Law" was a statute in Nazi Germany enacted on July 14, 1933, which allowed the compulsory sterilisation of any citizen who in the opinion of a "Genetic Health Court" suffered from a list of alleged genetic disorders – many of which were not, in fact, genetic. The elaborate interpretive commentary on the law was written by three dominant figures in the racial hygiene movement: Ernst Rüdin, Arthur Gütt and the lawyer Falk Ruttke.

Compulsory sterilization in Canada has a documented history in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. It is still ongoing as in 2017, sixty Indigenous women in Saskatchewan sued the provincial government, claiming they had been forced to accept sterilization before seeing their newborn babies. In June 2021, the Standing Committee on Human Rights in Canada found that compulsory sterilization is ongoing in Canada and its extent has been underestimated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenics in the United States</span>

Eugenics, the set of beliefs and practices which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population, played a significant role in the history and culture of the United States from the late 19th century into the mid-20th century. The cause became increasingly promoted by intellectuals of the Progressive Era.

Geza von Hoffmann (1885–1921) was a prominent Austrian-Hungarian eugenicist and writer. He lived for a time in California as the Austrian Vice-Consulate where he observed and wrote on eugenics practices in the United States.

The history of eugenics is the study of development and advocacy of ideas related to eugenics around the world. Early eugenic ideas were discussed in Ancient Greece and Rome. The height of the modern eugenics movement came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

During the era of National Socialism in Germany the discrimination towards the "Hereditarly Diseased" was at its peak. Racial hygiene was a big concern and the intent to fix it made Germany take extreme measures. People who were deaf and hard-of-hearing and all disabled people were considered a "social burden". Adolf Hitler and many others feared that deafness was a hereditary gene that could be passed on from mother or father to the child. Germany's main solution to decrease the numbers was through sterilization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924</span> 1924 U.S. state law allowing compulsory sterilization for eugenic purposes

The Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 was a U.S. state law in Virginia for the sterilization of institutionalized persons "afflicted with hereditary forms of insanity that are recurrent, idiocy, imbecility, feeble-mindedness or epilepsy”. It greatly influenced the development of eugenics in the twentieth century. The act was based on model legislation written by Harry H. Laughlin and challenged by a case that led to the United States Supreme Court decision of Buck v. Bell. The Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional and it became a model law for sterilization laws in other states. Justice Holmes wrote that a patient may be sterilized "on complying with the very careful provisions by which the act protects the patients from possible abuse." Between 1924 and 1979, Virginia sterilized over 7,000 individuals under the act. The act was never declared unconstitutional; however, in 2001, the Virginia General Assembly passed a joint resolution apologizing for the misuse of "a respectable, 'scientific' veneer to cover activities of those who held blatantly racist views." In 2015, the Assembly agreed to compensate individuals sterilized under the act.

Following the Mexican Revolution, the eugenics movement gained prominence in Mexico. Seeking to change the genetic make-up of the country's population, proponents of eugenics in Mexico focused primarily on rebuilding the population, creating healthy citizens, and ameliorating the effects of perceived social ills such as alcoholism, prostitution, and venereal diseases. Mexican eugenics, at its height in the 1930s, influenced the state's health, education, and welfare policies.

In Germany, a number of social welfare organisations for deaf people existed at the accession to power of the Nazi Party in 1933. Some of these collaborated with the Nazi regime.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenic feminism</span> Areas of the womens suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics

Eugenic feminism was a component of the women's suffrage movement which overlapped with eugenics. Originally coined by the eugenicist Caleb Saleeby, the term has since been applied to summarize views held by some prominent feminists of the United States. Some early suffragettes in Canada, particularly a group known as The Famous Five, also pushed for eugenic policies, chiefly in Alberta and British Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Training Institute of the Deaf in Berlin Neukolln</span>

The Training Institute of the Deaf in Berlin-Neukölln was founded in 1788 as a school for the deaf. Some German schools had been founded by educators trained in France by Abbé de l'Épée. The common view at the time was that the deaf were uneducable; they were even feared and shunned. L’Épée's school, students, and disciples helped to change that view. The Paris school, which had been founded by the Abbé Charles Michel de l'Épée in 1771, was using French Sign Language in combination with a set methodically developed signs. During l’Épée's lifetime, many schools were founded throughout Europe that were modeled on his teaching methods. Other German schools, such as the institute, were founded on the principles and methods of Oralism. Oralism is the idea that the Deaf should learn to speak in order to appear normal with the non-Deaf world, it became predominate in German schools. In 1811, this school became a training institute for teachers. Students from all over Prussia were sent here to receive training.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Kühl, Stefan (1994). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780195149784.
  2. ↑ Günter Grau; Claudia Schoppmann; Patrick Camiller (1995). Hidden holocaust?: gay and lesbian persecution in Germany, 1933–45. Taylor & Francis. p. xvii. ISBN   978-1-884964-15-2.
  3. ↑ Reilly, Philip R. (August 2015). "Eugenics and Involuntary Sterilization: 1907–2015". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics . 16: 351–368. doi:10.1146/annurev-genom-090314-024930. PMID   26322647.
  4. ↑ Donna F. Ryan; John S. Schuchman; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2002). Deaf People in Hitler's Europe . Gallaudet University Press. pp.  20–22. ISBN   978-1-56368-132-5.
  5. 1 2 International Military Tribunal (1951). Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuernberg, October 1946-April 1949. U.S. Government Printing Office.
  6. 1 2 3 Maretzki, Thomas W. (1989). "The Documentation of Nazi Medicine By German Medical Sociologists: A Review Article". Social Science and Medicine. 29 (12): 1319–1332. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(89)90230-x. PMID   2697944.
  7. ↑ Stefan Kühl (2001). The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism. Oxford University Press US. p. 61. ISBN   978-0-19-514978-4.
  8. 1 2 Scales-Trent, Judy (2001). "Racial Purity Laws in the United States and Nazi Germany: The Targeting Process". Human Rights Quarterly. 23 (2): 260–307. doi:10.1353/hrq.2001.0023.
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