“Wir lehnen ab, was fremd ist”. Eugen Fischer and the Language of German Anthropology (1909-1945)

Nineteenth-century German anthropology was long inspired by the humanistic values of Rudolf Virchow (although its practices were not entirely ethical by today’s standards). Even before 1914, however, there was a clear shift in the language and practice of the discipline. In 1909, Eugen Fischer went to Namibia to study human heredity. He concluded that any mixing with local “inferior” races was invariably detrimental to the whites. In a 1927 monograph, Fischer generalized these findings in collaboration with German eugenicists who sought to establish “racial hygiene”. Hitler read the book and appreciated it. As head of the Institute of Anthropology, Fischer praised the new regime in 1933 and was appointed rector of the University of Berlin. Since then, he has repeatedly lent “scientific” support to the racist theories and practices of his time. To avoid biological degeneration, he argued, Germans should rigorously reject the “foreign”. Among other aliens (e.g., the mentally retarded, etc.), Jews should be segregated and expelled for the sake of racial purity. No wonder Fischer collaborated with the Nazi eugenics programs and the drafting of the Nuremberg Laws.