Eugen Fischer
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Eugen Fischer (1874-1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics . He was one of those responsible for the Nazi German scientific theories of racial hygiene that legitimized the extermination of Jews, sent an estimated half a million Gypsies to their death in the Porajmos, and led to the compulsory sterilization of hundreds of thousands of other individuals, deemed racially defective, such as the Rhineland Bastards, the mentally ill, and the mentally retarded.
[edit] Biography
Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, Fischer joined the Nazi party soon after it was established. A book, Human Hereditary Teaching and Racial Hygiene, co-written by him and Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz, served as the "scientific" basis for Nazism's attitude toward other races. He served as the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, until 1933, when Hitler appointed him rector of the University of Berlin.
Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications used to determine racial origins. He and his team experimented with Gypsies and African-Germans, taking blood and measuring skulls to find scientific validation for his theories.
Fischer retired from the university in 1942. After the war, he completed his memoirs, which critics claim whitewash his role in the genocidal program of the Third Reich. He died in 1967.
[edit] References
- Weindling P. (1985). "Weimar eugenics: The kaiser wilhelm institute for anthropology, human heredity and eugenics in social context" 42: 303 - 318. DOI:10.1080/00033798500200221.
- Fangerau H., Müller I. (2002). "Das Standardwerk der Rassenhygiene von Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer und Fritz Lenz im Urteil der Psychiatrie und Neurologie 1921-1940". Der Nervenarzt 73: 1039-1046. DOI:10.1007/s00115-002-1421-1.
