Charles Goethe
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Charles M. Goethe (1875 - 1966) American eugenicist, entrepreneur, land developer, philanthropist, conservationist, founder of the Eugenics Society of Northern California, and a native and lifelong resident of Sacramento, California.
Goethe (pronounced "Gay-tee") wrote admiringly of California’s Forty-Niners and the State’s giant redwood trees. Goethe also recommended compulsory sterilization of the 'socially unfit', opposed immigration, and praised German scientists who used a comprehensive sterilization program to 'purify' the Aryan race before the outbreak of World War II. Goethe also funded anti-Asian campaigns, praised the Nazis before and after World War II, and practiced discrimination in his business dealings, refusing to sell real estate to Mexicans and Asians.
Goethe believed a variety of social successes (wealth, leadership, intellectual discoveries) and social problems (poverty, illegitimacy, crime and mental illness) could be traced to inherited biological attributes associated with 'racial temperament'.
Working with the Human Betterment Foundation in Pasadena, California, and the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, Goethe lobbied the State to restrict immigration from Mexico and carry out involuntary sterilizations of mostly poor women, defined as 'feeble-minded' or 'socially inadequate' by medical authorities between 1909 and the 1960s.
Upon return from a trip to Germany 1934, which at the time was sterilizing over 5,000 citizens per month, Goethe reportedly told a fellow eugenicist, "You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought...I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people." The Nazi eugenics movement eventually escalated to become The Holocaust, which claimed the lives of well over 10 million 'undesirables', including 6 million Jews.
When Goethe died, California State University, Sacramento received the largest share of his $24 million estate. The University dedicated the Goethe Arboretum to him in 1961 and attempted to name a new science building after him in 1965, but that effort was rebuffed by students and teachers.
CSUS treated Goethe with the reverence of a founding father, appointed him chairman of the University's advisory board, and organized an elaborate gala and 'national recognition day' to mark his 90th birthday in 1965, when he received letters of appreciation - solicited by his friends at CSUS - from the president of the Nature Conservancy, then-Governor Edmund G. Brown, and then-President Lyndon B. Johnson. As a result, in 1963, Goethe changed his will to make CSUS his primary beneficiary, bequeathing his residence, eugenics library, papers, and $640,000 to the University.
In Sacramento, during Goethe’s life, the advocacy of eugenics -the social philosophy of attempting to 'improve' the human population by artificial selection - was considered a progressive issue. Though it was opposed by many scientists who thought the understanding of human heredity was too shallow to create solid policy, and by religious leaders who opposed birth control of any form, in the years after the Holocaust it was not considered to be as radical as it is today. Around 20,000 patients in California State psychiatric hospital were sterilized with minimal or non-existent consent given between 1909 and 1950, when the law went into general disuse before its repeal in the 1960s. A favorable report by Human Betterment Foundation workers E.S. Gosney and Paul B. Popenoe, touting the results of the sterilizations in California, was published in the late 1920s, which in turn was often cited by the Nazi government as evidence wide-reaching sterilization programs were feasible and humane. When Nazi administrators went on trial for war crimes in Nuremberg after World War II, they justified their mass-sterilizations by pointing at the United States as their inspiration.
Controversy has recently erupted over the naming of the Goethe Arboretum, located on the north end of the University campus. Derek Hamilton, a History student at CSUS, has started an online petition advocating a name change for the arboretum, contending Goethe's racist views no longer reflect the values of CSUS. Goethe’s own writings, along with a history of eugenics, have been assembled to help the current CSUS community decide what to do in light of his lifelong dedication to eugenics and support of racist causes. Goethe's last recorded donation was to a white supremacist group.
[edit] External links
- ChangetheSign.org - 'Goethe Arboretum: Help Change The Sign!'
- NewsReview.com - 'Darkness on the edge of campus: University’s philanthropic 'godfather’ was mad about eugenics', Chrisanne Beckner, Sacramento News and Review (February 19, 2004)
- SacBee.com - 'Curious historical bedfellows: Sac State and its racist benefactor: After receiving honors aplenty from university, C. M. Goethe left most of his big estate to it', Tony Platt, The Sacramento Bee (February 29, 2004)
- SFGate.com - 'Eugenics and the Nazis -- the California connection', Edwin Black, San Francisco Chronicle (November 9, 2003)
- StateHornet.com - 'Online petition seeks to change name of arboretum', David Martin Olson, State Hornet (February 4, 2005)
- TimesOnline.co.uk - 'Liberal California confronts years of forced sterilisation', Chris Ayres, Sunday Times (July 11, 2003)
