Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer (July 5, 1874 – July 9, 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.

Biography

Born in Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden, 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 Adolf Hitler appointed him rector of a Berlin University of Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, now Humboldt University [ [http://www.historische-kommission-muenchen-editionen.de/rektoratsreden/anzeige/index.php?type=universitaet&id=104 Historische Komission München] de] .

Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications used to determine racial origins. He and his team experimented on 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.

References

*cite journal|title=Weimar eugenics: The kaiser wilhelm institute for anthropology, human heredity and eugenics in social context| author= Weindling P.|volume= 42|year= 1985| pages= 303–318| doi=10.1080/00033798500200221|journal=Annals of Science
*cite journal|title= Das Standardwerk der Rassenhygiene von Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer und Fritz Lenz im Urteil der Psychiatrie und Neurologie 1921-1940|author=Fangerau H., Müller I.|journal= Der Nervenarzt |volume= 73|year= 2002|doi=10.1007/s00115-002-1421-1|pages=1039–1046

See also

*Ex-Nazi
*Nazi eugenics
*Racial policies of the Third Reich
*Scientific racism