Homo Sapiens 1900

Last updated
Homo Sapiens 1900
Directed by Peter Cohen
Release date
  • 30 October 1998 (1998-10-30)
Running time
88 minutes
Country Sweden
LanguageEnglish

Homo Sapiens 1900 is a 1998 Swedish documentary film directed by Peter Cohen, about various eugenics methods that were in practice in Europe during the first part of the 20th century.

Contents

Synopsis

Eugenics is to be the scientific credo of the 20th century. The man credited with its invention, Francis Galton, says it is based on the concept that the evolution of man is crippled by the ill-conceived - those unfit to breed. The study of eugenics thus would concern itself with distinguishing the weed from the good flowers.

Eugenics offers two approaches: positive eugenics, and negative eugenics. Positive eugenics aims towards creating better humans by careful mating, based on one's genetic makeup. Negative eugenics, on the other hand, seeks to prevent those deemed inferior from reproducing, and thus not impeding man's evolution.

In the United States

The documentary begins with a clipping of a 1916 American movie that trumpets the creed of eugenics. In The Black Stork, the lead character, physician Harry Haiselden playing himself, refuses to give a newborn, mildly deformed baby a life-saving operation (or, instead, makes the operation fatal). 'There are times when saving a life is a greater crime than taking one', he proclaims. It soon transpires that The Black Stork's climactic scene was, far from being merely fiction, actually a re-enactment of one of Dr. Haiselden's real-life cases, [1] where he let a baby die because he considered the deformed baby to be a burden on society.

Charles Davenport is credited with being the founder of the eugenics movement in the United States. He founds the Eugenics Record Office on Long Island,[ citation needed ] the purpose being to create a nationwide eugenics register. He trains field workers to visit poor houses, prisons and mental institutions to document, and eventually eliminate through negative eugenics, inferior hereditary characteristics. To justify an aggressive campaign against blacks and immigrants, the eugenics movement used the concept of racial degeneration.

The world's first compulsory sterilization laws are passed in 1907.[ citation needed ] Shortly thereafter, over 20 states pass similar laws. Tens of thousands are sterilized in the process.

In Sweden

During the 1920s and 1930s, Sweden becomes a progressive welfare state, and within that period, the doctrine of racial hygiene is gradually implemented in the state's policy. In 1922, the world's first government institute on race biology, The Institute of Race Biology, is established. In 1934, parliament passes non-compulsory sterilization laws similar to that of the United States and Nazi-Germany. Unlike the two aforementioned countries, where sterilization was compulsory, in Sweden a 'democratic approach' is pursued, under the motto of 'opposition shall be overcome through persuasion'.

The German and Swedish implementation of eugenics was bound by a common thread: a profound pride in their Nordic bloodline, and their belief that other ethnic groups were inherently inferior, and those groups should be prevented from interbreeding with the superior one. Hence, negative eugenics was the only logical outcome of Sweden's adoption of eugenics. In pursuit of establishing both positive and negative heritage, a comprehensive study was done on the Swedish population. Towns, parishes, prisons and correctional institutions were visited, and photographs and physical measurements of each person taken.

In the Soviet Union

The development of racial hygiene and eugenics was beset by problems from the very onset in the Soviet Union. The reason was that Mendel's theory on heredity was ideologically incompatible with the Soviet state, where human beings were regarded as being completely malleable through social engineering and education.

After Lenin's death in 1924, German neurologist Oskar Vogt was requested to study Lenin's brain. [2] He established the Brain Research Institute in Moscow. One of its tasks was to collect all the brains of deceased, highly talented/intellectual Soviet individuals, with Lenin as its first specimen. By safeguarding the brains of the best and brightest for research purposes, these scientists hoped to map out and gain a full understanding of the brain.

In Germany/Nazi Germany

Germany's first institute of race biology, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, opens in 1927 in Berlin. The Institute's chairman, Eugen Fischer, says its task is to 'investigate the connection between heredity, environment and crossbreeding, and to promote social measures which benefit racially sound individuals'. Though genetics research is gradually beginning to challenge some of the claims made by racial hygiene theories, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute reduces 'genetics' to just another 'auxiliary science' subordinate to eugenics. With the passing of forced sterilization laws, thousands of Germans with various disabilities are sterilized. Eventually, this is followed by extermination.

Related Research Articles

Eugenics is a fringe 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics</span> Nazi-era German institute promoting racism

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.

Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism received credence throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. The division of humankind into biologically distinct groups, and the attribution of specific traits both physical and mental to them by constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, that is, racial theories, is sometimes called racialism, race realism, or race science by its proponents. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.

<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">Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer</span> German human biologist, national socialist, and geneticist

Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a German-Dutch human biologist and geneticist, who was the Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Münster until he retired in 1965. A member of the Dutch noble Verschuer family, his title Freiherr is often translated as baron.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Popenoe</span>

Paul Bowman Popenoe was an American marriage counselor, eugenicist and agricultural explorer. He was an influential advocate of the compulsory sterilization of mentally ill people and people with mental disabilities, and the father of marriage counseling in the United States.

<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 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oskar Vogt</span> German physician and neurologist

Oskar Vogt was a German physician and neurologist. He and his wife Cécile Vogt-Mugnier are known for their extensive cytoarchetectonic studies on the brain.

Fritz Gottlieb Karl Lenz was a German geneticist, member of the Nazi Party, and influential specialist in eugenics in Nazi Germany.

<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 pseudoscientific 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.

Wolfgang Abel was an Austrian anthropologist and one of Nazi Germany's top racial biologists. He was the son of the Austrian paleontologist Othenio Abel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry J. Haiselden</span> American surgeon and eugenicist

Harry John Haiselden was an American physician and the Chief Surgeon at the German-American Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Haiselden gained notoriety in 1915, when he refused to perform needed surgery for children born with severe birth defects and allowed the babies to die, in an act of eugenics. The film The Black Stork was made by him, about him, and starred him.

<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.

<i>The Black Stork</i> 1917 film

The Black Stork, also known as Are You Fit To Marry?, is a 1917 American motion picture film both written by and starring Harry J. Haiselden, who was the chief surgeon at the German-American Hospital in Chicago. The Black Stork is Haiselden's fictionalized account of his eugenic infanticide of John Bollinger, who was born with severe disabilities. The film depicts Haiselden's fictionalized story of a woman who has a nightmare of a severely disabled child being a menace to society. Once awoken from the nightmare, she visits a doctor and realizes all was fine with her child. However, the purpose of the film was not to have a happy ending and move on. The purpose was to basically warn people, especially teenagers, of the dangers of sexual promiscuity and "race mixing", as these actions were believed to be the cause of disabilities in children.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Study of Vladimir Lenin's brain</span>

The anatomical study of Lenin's brain by the German neurologist and psychiatrist Oskar Vogt in 1924 was a significant event in the history of neuroscience. The study aimed to understand the neural basis of Lenin's political and intellectual abilities. The research was conducted at the request of the Soviet government, which wanted to prove that Lenin's genius was the result of his brain's superior structure. Under Vogt's leadership, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin was established, and the study of Lenin's brain was one of the institute's first major projects. The histological analysis methods used to examine tissue samples and helped establish the procedure as a viable way of studying the brain. Though certain structural aspects in Lenin's brain had been said to contribute to heightened cognitive ability, Vogt was nonetheless unable to identify any particular region within Lenin's brain which provided structural proof to Lenin's genius abilities. While the study has limitations and controversies, it is significant in the context of the field of neuropsychology.

References

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