IV—
Continuity and Controversy:
Schallmayer's Defense of Eugenics

During the three years immediately following the publication of Vererbung und Auslese in 1903, Schallmayer's book was reviewed in at least two newspapers and over twenty literary and academic journals, ranging from philosophy to medicine and spanning the political spectrum from arch-conservatism to socialism. Later editions of his treatise (1910 and 1918), as well as Schallmayer's third work, Beiträge zu einer Nationalbiologie (Contributions to a National Biology) (1905), continued to attract attention in a large number of professional publications.^[1] Although Vererbung und Auslese was not without its wholehearted admirers, the critical reviews of the text far outweighed the complimentary. Indeed, given the aim and scope of the work, the unfavorable reception it received in many circles was a foregone conclusion. In attempting as it did to redefine and reexamine old social, political, and medical problems from a new, allegedly "scientific" perspective, Schallmayer's treatise cut across several well-entrenched disciplinary boundaries. It is not surprising that Schallmayer's intentional breach of academic territoriality, together with the perceived inadequacies of his intellectual premises, alarmed and often angered practitioners of the disciplines

in question. Even after a decade of sustained clarification of the assumptions and aims of eugenics, and after years of assurances on the part of Schallmayer that eugenics did not seek to put the more traditional disciplines out of business, many individuals continued to attack the intellectual hubris and professional pretensions of the upstart field and its spokesmen.

Of the interest groups and academic elites who took offense at the claims of Schallmayer and other eugenicists, the "social anthropologists,"^[2] social scientists, and public hygienists stand out as the most vocal. The verbal assaults directed at Vererbung und Auslese by representatives of these three groups initiated a series of heated intellectual controversies with Schallmayer which never fully abated. Although not without interest in their own right, these controversies become particularly important when examined from the standpoint of the development and maturation of Schallmayer's view on race hygiene. The eugenicist's dispute with the three groups highlight three fundamental tenets of Schallmayer's eugenic thought: first, that eugenics has nothing to do with ideologies of Aryan or Nordic supremacy; second, that the goal of biological efficiency necessitates a biologically informed sociology as well as the reconstruction and reformulation of German social policy; and third, that eugenics is an extension, not a replacement, of traditional public hygiene. Despite differences in immediate goals, both eugenics and public hygiene were part of a larger, three-part program to promote Germany's biological fitness which Schallmayer labeled biologische Politik (biological policy).

Notwithstanding his increasingly heavy emphasis after 1908 on the third part of his program, "quantitative population policy," Schallmayer's views exhibit an unusual degree of intellectual cohesion and continuity. His overriding objective from beginning to end was to increase the hereditary efficiency of the nation; all his plans, programs, and schema, varied as they were, were directed toward the attainment of this one goal. Schallmayer's controversies with the social anthropologists, social scientists, and public hygienists at once reveal this continuity of vision and some of the obstacles preventing its realization.

Race Hygiene against Racism

Of all the critiques directed against Schallmayer's text, none was as polemical, petty, and self-serving as those made by the so-called German school of Sozialanthropologie (social anthropology)—a movement which developed parallel to eugenics, but one that, at least until the Nazi period, was not really part of race hygiene.^[3] While social anthropology had many affinities to eugenics (largely owing to the set of social Darwinist assumptions held in common), it was regarded as an independent discipline by its practitioners and fellow travelers, complete with its own methodologies, objectives, and journal. The major thrust of this discipline was to provide a scientific legitimation for ideologies of Aryan supremacy. Though individual Nordic enthusiasts were found among the eugenicists, this movement fell outside the mainstream of Wilhelmine eugenics.

The intellectual origins of social anthropology can be traced to the writings and influence of the French diplomat, publicist, and aristocrat Comte Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882).^[4] Best known for his lengthy two-volume Essai sur l'Inégalité des Races Humaines (Essay on the Inequality of Human Races) (1853–55), Gobineau was above all obsessed with the question of why civilizations have declined in the past and why contemporary civilizations are destined for decay in the future.^[5] Gobineau, whose pessimistic view of the historical process was colored by his inability to accept the political realities of postrevolutionary France, believed he had found the key to the inevitable decline of civilizations in a single factor: racial mixture. Each of the three so-called major races—white, yellow, and black—possessed, according to Gobineau, their own particular virtues and characteristics. These racial traits accounted for the cultural diversity of past and present civilizations. The catch, of course, was that the races were not only different but also unequal. For Gobineau the white race, or "Aryans,"^[6] embraced the lofty ideals of freedom, honor, and spirituality—the virtues that, as George Mosse has aptly pointed out, corresponded to his vision of the French no-

bility.^[7] Moreover, only the white race (which itself could be divided into several subraces, with the Nordic or Germanic representing the pinnacle of Aryan virtue) was capable of creating a truly great civilization. The yellow and black races, while not totally lacking in favorable traits, were decidedly inferior to the white race and were equated, in the mind of Gobineau, with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat respectively.^[8]

As Gobineau viewed it, civilizations began to decline when the races or subraces which engendered them mixed with other inferior races, thus polluting the racial composition of the indigenous population. The process of racial hybridization, with its ominous results for the Germanic subrace and those nations founded upon it, was inescapable. In the past, people of different races always migrated to new lands and intermarried with the native people of the region. All evidence suggested that they will continue to do so. Gobineau thus resigned himself to the inevitable "degeneration" of the so-called Aryan race and the allegedly superior culture that only it made possible.^[9]

Gobineau's philosophy of Aryan supremacy and his emphasis on race as the motive force of world history never gained much of a foothold in his native France; Germany proved to be far more intellectually receptive to his ideas. Through his personal friendship with the composer Richard Wagner, Gobineau's name became well-known among members of the conservative, anti-Semitic Bayreuth circle.^[10] In 1894 the librarian and publicist Ludwig Schemann (1852–1938), an influential member of the Bayreuth circle, founded a Gobineau society. As a result of Schemann's efforts, Gobineau's racism reached numerous right-wing groups, the most important of which was the militaristic, anti-Semitic Pan-German League.^[11] During the next forty years, Gobineau's ideas were extended and modified to fit the specifications of the völkisch right until they found their way, admittedly in a grossly distorted guise, into National Socialist ideology.

Gobineau's Essai , which was published before Darwin's Origin of Species , rested primarily on second-hand historical and linguistic "evidence"; the French aristocrat never attempted to

incorporate biological or anthropological theories into his philosophy of history. Some of his followers, however, had a broader perspective. By combining the selectionism of the Weismannists, the craniometric techniques developed by the French school of physical anthropology, and the culturally and linguistically based racism of Gobineau, a younger generation of Gobineau admirers created a new brand of racism that, at least in some circles, enjoyed an aura of scientific respectability. In Germany, this venomous intellectual concoction went by the name "social anthropology." It enjoyed some measure of popularity from roughly the late 1880s until World War I.^[12]

The three social anthropologists most actively engaged in intellectual battle with Schallmayer were also the three main theoretical spokesmen for their field. Perhaps the most articulate among them, although not the most important from the standpoint of the subsequent debate, was the French librarian and university lecturer Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936).^[13] Like Gobineau, Lapouge was held in much higher regard on the right bank of the Rhine than on the left. Kaiser Wilhelm II championed him as "the only great Frenchman."^[14] In fact by 1900, Lapouge's writings, ridiculed in France, were published mainly in Germany. By the turn of the century, the French social anthropologist had developed close intellectual ties with his German colleagues; indeed during his lifetime Lapouge contributed about sixty articles to the Politisch-anthropologische Revue (Political-Anthropological Review), the professional journal of the German Gobineau school.

Stripped to its bare essentials, Lapouge's views can be summarized as follows: the "Aryan race" is the only race capable of high social, intellectual, and cultural achievements, and is in fact the true biological underpinning of Western civilization. The Aryans, recognizable by a constellation of physical traits including blue eyes, blond hair, and, most important, a long ovalshaped (dolichocephalic) head, were at the losing end of a constant Darwinian struggle of survival with inferior stock—in particular, with the brown-eyed, brown-haired, round-headed

"brachycephalic race."^[15] The disastrous effects of this racial struggle could already be observed in France, where the once common Aryan had become an endangered species at the expense of an ever-growing proportion of other racial types. Since in addition to physical differences all races possessed their own unique intellectual, psychological, and even political characteristics, the West (and France in particular), was in danger of a great increase in the aesthetically unappealing larger average cephalic index. Because different social classes have demonstrably different racial compositions (the higher classes containing more pure Aryan types), Occidental civilization stood at the threshold of a degenerate era when non-Aryan bourgeois or even proletarian arrangements would displace Aryan aristocratic privilege and power. In short, the goal of social anthropology was to examine empirically the life process of the "Aryan race"—to describe its social and geographical diffusion, to evaluate the effects of selective and counterselective factors for its long-term survival, and finally, to propose measures that would restore the predominance of the Aryans.^[16]

Lapouge's presuppositions and disciplinary program, if not his extreme pessimism, were echoed in the work of his German colleague, Otto Ammon (1862–1916). Like Lapouge, Ammon assumed that there was a direct correlation between hereditary fitness and social standing—a class bias Schallmayer shared, albeit in a much less blatant and exaggerated form. Ammon used the opinions and language of Weismann and Galton to support his claim that the various social classes represented a necessary form of natural selection, and should be preserved intact at all costs. Indeed, his defense of a meritocratic social order would seem to assure his good standing with many German eugenicists, particularly with Schallmayer.^[17] Yet Ammon, following Lapouge, never failed to link biological fitness and high social standing with Nordic or Germanic stock, and was primarily concerned with demonstrating a correlation between class and racial composition. Using so-called objective statistical evidence from army recruits in the southwest German state of Baden, Ammon

not only "proved" that the higher classes contained a larger percentage of dolichocephalic Nordic types,^[18] but also that "city dwellers have a higher proportion of long-headed [individuals] among them than do those from the countryside."^[19] Ammon was convinced that the larger Nordic element among city dwellers could be explained by the fact that individuals of Germanic stock, who possessed a "somewhat higher drive toward achievement,"^[20] found little chance for material advancement in the countryside and hence often migrated to the towns. Ammon's one-sided preoccupation with the Aryan question far overshadowed the presuppositions and goals he held in common with Schallmayer.

The third, and from the standpoint of the ensuing controversy most important social anthropologist, was the zoologist and physician Ludwig Woltmann (1871–1907).^[21] A one-time member of the German Social Democratic party, Woltmann began his intellectual career with an attempt to synthesize historical materialism, Darwinism and neo-Kantianism.^[22] By 1900, however, Woltmann had more or less abandoned his utopian synthesis and turned his attention from "the dialectics of class struggle . . . to the philosophy of race struggle."^[23] Like Ammon and Lapouge, Woltmann placed the "Germanic race" at the pinnacle of human evolution, but unlike the other social anthropologists Woltmann used aesthetic rather than "anthropological/scientific" evidence to support his contention. For Woltmann, the Aryan embodied the ideal of physical and spiritual beauty—a beauty constantly compromised, as he kept reminding his readers, by dysgenic racial mixtures with non-Germanic stock. During the last years of his short life Woltmann published Die Germanen und die Renaissance in Italien (The Teutons and the Renaisance in Italy) (1905) in which he argued that outstanding men of the Italian Renaissance such as Dante and Michelangelo were descendants of the Germanic tribes, not the Romans.^[24]

In addition to their books, the social anthropologists sought other means of communicating their ideas to a larger audience. All utilized the Politisch-anthropologische Revue , founded and fi-

nanced by Woltmann, to popularize their goals and promote their new discipline. Woltmann himself published scores of articles in his journal, not always under his own name.^[25] But even prior to the founding of the Revue in 1902, Woltmann and Ammon attempted to publicize their views by entering the Krupp competition—an endeavor that met with mixed results.

It was disappointing but not devastating for Ammon to learn that the third edition of his treatise, Die Gesellschaftsordnung und ihre natürlichen Grundlagen (The Social Order and Its Natural Foundations) (1900) did not receive a prize; after all the rules governing the contest specifically prohibited the judges from extending an award to books already published.^[26] Woltmann, however, had a far more difficult time trying to rationalize the results of the competition. Woltmann's 326-page entry, Politische Anthropologie (Political Anthropology) only merited third prize—an honor which the German social anthropologist was asked to share with three other contestants.^[27] Woltmann, insulted that the judges did not seem to share his own ridiculously high opinion of his text, refused to accept the award and began an extraordinarily nasty and petty campaign to discredit the contest, the judges, and above all, the contest's first prize winner.^[28] The verbal attack launched by Woltmann against one of the judges reached such proportions that he was brought to court on a libel suit and fined three hundred marks.^[29]

Insofar as Woltmann's critique of the two judges (Schäfer and Conrad) had any intellectual substance at all, it was directed against their alleged ignorance of the newest anthropological findings (meaning the work of the social anthropologists) and their seeming disregard for the importance of race in determining the contours of social evolution and human history. For Woltmann, the correct "scientific" view of race was clearly summarized in the Introduction to his Politische Anthropologie : "the biological history of the human race is the true and fundamental history of nations"; "the military and intellectual achievements of states," he continued, "can be explained in terms of the physiological features and inequality of the races which comprise

them."^[30] Given the degree to which Woltmann was convinced of the truth and total sufficiency of his view of race, it is not surprising that he became indignant at Schäfer and Conrad's lack of enthusiasm for his philosophy of history.

In addition to attacking the judges, Woltmann exploited his position as editor of the Revue to criticize Schallmayer and his treatise. Although Woltmann was able to single out one or two minor problems with Schallmayer's Vererbung und Auslese , the real issue was Schallmayer's outright rejection of Aryan ideologies and his reluctance to praise the work of the social anthropologists. Woltmann angrily accused Schallmayer of dismissing race theory "with empty words" and reprimanded him for "superficial arguments" used to "gloss over this difficult and little researched [race] problem." He attributed the eugenicist's stand to a lack of familiarity with the most recent literature on the subject.^[31]

It would be easy to dismiss Woltmann's extreme and totally unprofessional attack upon Schallmayer and the judges as merely a case of pathological envy had it not been duplicated by several of his colleagues. Even assuming that Woltmann himself put strong pressure on Lapouge, Ammon, and others to speak out on his behalf, the social anthropologists would not have rallied to Woltmann's defense with such zeal had not more been at stake than the wounded feelings of an overly sensitive friend. Virtually the entire German Gobineau school would not have spoken out so loudly and vigorously against Schallmayer had they not perceived the outcome of the contest as a pledge of support for eugenics at the expense of their own discipline. As one social anthropologist bemoaned: "It is unfortunate that the first opportunity in Germany to support social anthropology was thwarted by the blunders in the evaluation of the entries."^[32] Indeed, so strong was the need to defend the disciplinary integrity of social anthropology that Ludwig Wilser, a friend and collaborator of Woltmann, openly praised Politische Anthropologie as the best entry before he had even read Schallmayer's work!^[33]

To better understand the fears of the social anthropologists it is necessary to keep in mind that by 1904, at the time of the first

critiques directed against Schallmayer and the judges, a number of eugenics-related articles and books, in particular Alfred Ploetz's influential work, Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse (1895) had been favorably received in various scholarly journals. Moreover, in 1904 Ploetz founded the Archiv fü Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie , (Journal for Racial and Social Biology), the organ of the incipient eugenics movement and competitor to Woltmann's Revue . In awarding first prize to Schallmayer, two of Germany's most eminent biologists, Haeckel and Ziegler, seemed to be supporting a movement which not only questioned the racial presuppositions of social anthropology but also threatened to become the dominant form of social Darwinism. This must have appeared all the more surprising to Woltmann and his colleagues since Haeckel was known to be sympathetic to theories upholding Aryan racial supremacy.^[34]

Schallmayer responded quickly and forcefully to the criticisms and attacks of the social anthropologists. He recognized that, at least in the case of Woltmann, he was dealing with a person "whose opinion of himself was as abnormal and excessive as the volubility and lack of restraint with which he sought compensation for the injury done to his self-esteem."^[35] Consequently, Schallmayer could dismiss many of Woltmann's pettier remarks as being little more than a misguided attempt to nurse his wounded pride. But Schallmayer never lost sight of the real issue: his rejection of Aryan racism. As he correctly pointed out in his Beiträge :

The active apostles of modern racial ideology pay especially close attention to the way a book compares with their dogma. . . . If it ignores their views, it is worthless; if it contradicts them it is dangerous, bad, hateful and will be treated as such. In all their subjectivity . . . Lapouge, Ammon, Wilser, Woltmann and Hueppe, believe that the Jena contest could have only intended to promote science in the sense of their teachings. [They] continually reiterate that the subject matter of the prize question is the same as their race theories, although—considering the dubious scientific and even smaller practical worth of this doctrine—neither the prize donor nor any of the judges held such a view.^[36]

Later on, in several articles and parts of books devoted wholly to

a critique of the German Gobineau school, Schallmayer went beyond the explicit attacks of the German social anthropologists in order to highlight very important differences between his views and those of the "race enthusiasts."

From the very outset Schallmayer considered Gobineau's work to be unscientific.^[37] In the second edition of Vererbung und Auslese (1910), however, Schallmayer directed his attack less at Gobineau than at his followers. After all, Gobineau, even if more a poet than a scientist, did have the disadvantage of writing before Darwin's views were popularized or even published. While fully recognizing the reactionary motives informing Gobineau's racial ideology,^[38] Schallmayer believed that the French diplomat at least deserved the honor of being the first person to examine "cultural history from the standpoint of the hereditary worth of population (Volkskörper) . . . ."^[39] But the modern race theorists claimed to be scientists, yet accepted the superiority of the "Nordic race" as an article of faith, as an a priori truth, in the same manner as theologians believe the teachings of the Church.^[40]

Schallmayer in particular attacked the view that the "Germanic race" is the only human group capable of creating a high level of culture. This was, he thought, a classic case of unrestrained ethnocentrism. Both his first- and secondhand knowledge of Chinese civilization was enough to convince him that "the yellow race . . . is, in general, scarcely inferior to the white race." The cultural values of the Chinese, he pointed out, were not the same as those of Western Europeans; indeed from the Chinese point of view, Western civilization was culturally backward.^[41] Moreover, Asiatic peoples, Schallmayer continued, developed a high level of culture much earlier than the white population of Europe, and might on that basis even be viewed as superior to the Aryans. Even among Europeans, latecomers to civilization by Chinese standards, it was not "the blonde primeval race" but rather the Mediterranean peoples who first developed a flourishing civilization. Schallmayer, quoting studies

by Lewis Henry Morgan and others, went so far as to suggest that "at the time of Tacitus and Caesar even the Iroquois were more culturally advanced than the Germans."^[42]

Of all the presuppositions underlying the social anthropologists' theories none was more vigorously attacked by Schallmayer than the idea that mental traits could be ascribed to the various racial groups, and that these intellectual traits could in turn be deduced from physical characteristics.^[43] The shape of a skull, the size of a nose, or the proportion between trunk and legs revealed nothing, he thought, about the innate mental abilities of individuals. Nor did he take seriously the German Gobineau school's discussion of racial type, racial psyche, or racial soul. Such terms were metaphysical concepts devoid of any scientific meaning.^[44] Schallmayer also found ridiculous the habit of "constructing the mental characteristics" of the Nordic race using either "alleged or real intellectual traits of several outstanding personalities."^[45] Even if it could be proven that Dante was blonde, it hardly followed that all Nordics were capable of composing the Divine Comedy . According to Schallmayer, insofar as a racial psyche existed at all, it was an infinitely complex web of all the individual mental traits of all the people belonging to the race^[46] —hardly something readily accessible to the present-day researcher.

Schallmayer was consoled by the knowledge that the racial nonsense of the Gobineau school was not taken seriously by many professional groups, especially by mainline German academic anthropologists.^[47] Yet this knowledge in no way lessened his fears that the aims and methodology of eugenics might be either falsely or intentionally equated with social anthropology—that race hygiene and racism, so to speak, would become linked in the public eye. A mistaken linkage of the two would serve to discredit the young discipline Schallmayer spent so much time promoting; an intentional linkage would "guide the eugenics movement in a direction that leads nowhere or nowhere good."^[48]

A large part of the confusion concerning the goals of eugenics, Schallmayer thought, could be traced to the double meaning of the term Rasse (race). On the one hand Rasse denoted "the sum of hereditary traits of any individual, usually in the sense of hereditary fitness." On the other hand Rasse was used to denote "a large group of individuals who, owing to their common descent, possessed common hereditary traits which separated them from other groups of the same species."^[49] Whereas the second meaning of race included all individuals possessing a set of more or less common physical characteristics, without taking into account differences in the hereditary fitness of individuals, the first meaning focused on the variations in hereditary fitness of individuals comprising any given population, including so-called racial groups.^[50] For Schallmayer, eugenics or race hygiene was dedicated to improving the hereditary fitness of all populations, be they composed primarily of one anthropological race or many; all human groups irrespective of their racial, that is, anthropological, composition were equally susceptible to degeneration and equally open to biological improvement.

Although the two totally different ways in which Schallmayer and the social anthropologists used the word race should have precluded any attempt to synthesize the two disciplines,^[51] the propagandists for "racial policy" did hint that their goals could be achieved by eugenic methods. According to the Aryan enthusiasts, the inherent worth or fitness of an individual or population depended upon the percentage of its "Nordic element"; differences between races were infinitely more important than differences between individuals of the same race.^[52] Couched in eugenic terminology a "policy of racial supremacy" could be carried out by encouraging only the Nordic elements in the nation to have more children, rather than all those who were biologically fittest.^[53]

From Schallmayer's perspective, such a "policy of racial supremacy" was not only of dubious scientific worth but would "lead to political and moral anarchy."^[54] The racism of Woltmann,

Lapouge, Ammon, and others had already lowered Germany's prestige and popularity among foreigners.^[55] Racism linked to race hygiene, however, would be even more devastating because it would ruin both the national and international respectability of eugenics. In numerous publications Schallmayer bemoaned the publicity given to the "German and Aryan enthusiasts," always comparing their endeavors unfavorably to the "true search for knowledge and wisdom" underlying the work of important eugenicists like Frances Galton.^[56]

In order to minimize the confusion concerning the goals of eugenics, Schallmayer himself always employed the word Rassehygiene rather than Rassenhygiene , and continually sought to convince other eugenicists to do so. Although by 1905 the term Rassenhygiene had already been adopted by most would-be eugenicists (largely owing to the influence of Ploetz's first treatise and the Archiv ), Schallmayer remained staunchly opposed to the plural form of the word Rasse because it excluded what for him was the most important meaning of race—race as denoting the sum total of the hereditary traits of an individual or a population.^[57] He hoped that Galton's less ambiguous "national eugenics" could serve as an appropriate substitute for both terms and favored its popularization in Germany.^[58] Unfortunately, however, Eugenik never made much headway in Germany, in part because of the reluctance of many to use an English word when an acceptable German term already existed, but also because some Aryan-minded eugenicists clearly valued the implicit double meaning of Rassenhygiene.^[59] Although he waged a good battle, Schallmayer ultimately failed to persuade most of his colleagues to abandon the word; from its inception in the first decade of the twentieth century to its frightful end during the last years of World War II, the German eugenics movement was always known as the rassenhygienische Bewegung (race hygiene movement).

Throughout his career Schallmayer fought hard to see to it that the Aryan enthusiasts and their ideologies did not gain a foothold in the incipient eugenics movement—that race hygiene

did not become racist.^[60] He did not, however, meet with total success. Though the Wilhelmine and Weimar eugenics movement was not totally free of the influence of the Aryan mystique, it did not direct its program toward the propagation of a Nordic elite. Race hygiene under the swastika witnessed the complete synthesis of the two disciplines.

Biological Efficiency and Social Policy

Schallmayer also came into conflict with a second group: the academic social scientists.^[61] Here too professional prestige and disciplinary integrity played a significant role in the several critiques directed at both Schallmayer and eugenics. But unlike the intellectually bankrupt attacks of the social anthropologists, those of the social scientists contained wholly defensible and legitimate arguments concerning Sozialpolitik. Schallmayer and German eugenicists in general sought to make biological efficiency an important goal, if not the goal of social policy. The discussion of social policy and its enactment, however, was traditionally in the hands of academic sociologists and social theorists—men who, rightly or wrongly, viewed race hygiene's attempts to modify and transform social policy with suspicion or even hostility.

We have already discussed Wilhelmine Germany's obsession with what contemporaries called "the social question." Although Schallmayer's 1891 book touched indirectly upon the relationship between biological efficiency, the social question, and social policy, it was Alfred Ploetz who, in the twelve or so years spanning the publication of Schallmayer's two treatises, actually defined and fleshed out the so-called race hygiene-social policy problem. Like Schallmayer, Ploetz was interested in social and economic questions and trained as a physician before turning his attention exclusively to eugenics.^[62] In 1892, while practicing medicine in the United States, he first expressed his sentiments concerning

the problem in a short article published in an American socialist paper. Subsequent articles such as "Racial Fitness and Socialism" (1894), and "The Relationship Between the Principles of Social Policy and Race Hygiene" (1902), as well as Ploetz's important eugenic treatise Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen. Ein Versuch über Rassenhygiene und ihr Verhältnis zu den humanen Idealen, besonders zum Sozialismus (The Fitness of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak: A Discussion Concerning Race Hygiene and Its Relationship To Humanitarian Ideals, Especially to Socialism) (1895), served to convey a more detailed analysis of the issue.^[63]

The major thrust of Ploetz's argument recalls Darwin's personal dilemma in the Descent of Man : how can human beings reconcile the inevitable conflict between the humanitarian ideals and practices of the noblest part of our nature, with the interest of the race, whose biological efficiency is impaired by those very ideals and practices. Translated into concrete economic and political terms, Ploetz viewed the problem as follows: should the state, indeed could the state, continue to expand the social net and regulate various aspects of economic life in order to lessen the hardships of the weak and economically underprivileged, at the risk of undermining the overall biological fitness of its citizens? Would not social legislation providing for health, accident, and old-age insurance invariably lead to an increase in the number of unfit, perhaps at the expense of the fittest members of society? For Ploetz, the conflict between humanitarian instincts and biological imperatives was simple; the solution, however, was less so.^[64]

Ploetz's initial answer to the dilemma, as spelled out in his book, involved a form of germ-plasm selection. This germ-plasm selection, however, would not be indirect—the result of eugenic practices whereby only the fit were encouraged to reproduce—but rather direct: all married couples would be asked to select only the most superior of their germ cells for fertilization.^[65] Once the laws of heredity were more exactly understood, couples could exploit this knowledge with an eye toward preventing the

transmission of so-called inferior variations. As Ploetz himself pointed out, "the more we can prevent the production of inferior variations, the less we need the struggle for existence to eliminate them."^[66] If couples could ensure that their offspring were their genetic superiors, the capitalist system as a form of selection would be superfluous; social legislation or even socialism could be introduced without fear of any long-term biological damage. In such a manner, Ploetz maintained, the goals of humanity could be reconciled with the interest of the race.

Ploetz's desire to master the laws of heredity as a first step in the "control of variability" reveals the same managerial-technocratic logic that underlay Schallmayer's eugenic strategy. Initially, however, Ploetz did not propose any of the more controversial eugenic measures, but instead wished to "push selection back" to the pre-fertilization stage with his plan for germ-cell selection.^[67] This plan was, of course, totally unfeasible. Although he did not abandon all discussion of it, Ploetz was forced, at least temporarily, to rely on other means to achieve his end. But his adoption of some of the more traditional goals and programs articulated by Schallmayer and others did not dampen his interest in the relationship between social policy and biological fitness; he merely turned his attention to the way existing social policy either aided, harmed, or ignored the goals of eugenics.^[68]

For years Ploetz wrote articles that touched on the relationship between the social sciences and race hygiene. In 1910, however, he decided to walk into the lion's den. On October 22, Ploetz presented a paper entitled "The Concepts of Race and Society and Several Problems Relating to Them" at the First Conference of German Sociologists in Frankfurt.^[69] Most of the dons of German academic sociology and economics were present. After a lengthy series of definitions of terms like race, race hygiene, society, and social biology, Ploetz paused a moment to point out the ethical significance of race hygiene: Properly understood, race hygiene provided nothing less than "the final . . . normative imperative for all human action."^[70] The social scientists were then treated to a discussion of the relationship between race and society which, Ploetz's description of its "sym-

biotic" nature notwithstanding, implied that society, and hence social policy, existed to serve the interest of the race.

Although one delegate was willing to defend Ploetz,^[71] the reaction of most of the other social scientists was, if not overtly hostile, certainly far more critical of his outlook. The views of Werner Sombart and Max Weber were typical of those of many of the participants. Sombart, as chairman of the conference, had little opportunity to express his own opinions in the debate, but his sentiments on the subject of the relationship between the social sciences and eugenics were well known from an article entitled "Ideals of Social Policy."^[72] Published at least in part as a reaction to Ploetz's Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse , Sombart's essay touched on a number of significant issues also raised in Ploetz's 1910 speech. Perhaps the most important issue was whether social policy should serve eugenic goals.^[73] According to Sombart, social policy was synonymous with economic policy, and it sought only to preserve and promote a particular economic system.^[74] Believing himself to have been successful in freeing social policy from the ethical concerns of older economists, Sombart was not about to bind it to another ethical ideal like race hygiene. Moreover he also remained unconvinced of the absolute priority of "the good of the species" over other ideals.^[75] Indeed, for Sombart social policy and race hygiene had little to do with each other—an assessment which Schallmayer would later call into question.

Sombart also rejected the eugenicists' claim that societies behave according to natural law—an idea further developed by Max Weber at the 1910 conference. In what was the most sophisticated critique of Ploetz's views, Weber began his discussion by attacking several of the eugenicist's presuppositions. For example, Weber neither accepted Ploetz's premise that biological fitness was a prerequisite for civilization nor supported his conclusion that degeneration posed an imminent threat to society.^[76] In addition, he also lashed out at the ambiguous term Rasse, a term that for Weber was totally incapable of explaining a single important sociological phenomenon.^[77]

Weber reserved his most perceptive criticism for last. Deliv-

ered more in the manner of a warning than a reproach, Weber reminded Ploetz of the dangers of making excessive claims for the biological perspective of social events at the heart of race hygiene:

I should like to question the idea that, just because some processes which concern biology—the processes of selection—are undoubtedly affected by social institutions . . . it therefore makes sense to appropriate any object or problem in that area for a science which has yet to be constructed for the first time for this very purpose. . . . We have seen how it has been believed that the whole world, including for instance, art and everything else, could be explained in purely economic terms. We see how modern geographers treat all cultural phenomena from a geographical point of view. . . . My view is that the individual sciences lose their point when each fails to perform that specific task which it, and it alone can perform; and I should like to express the hope that this fate may not befall the biological approach to social phenomena.^[78]

What Weber demanded of Ploetz and the other eugenicists were empirically-based case studies demonstrating the importance of biological factors for "concrete social phenomena." Until such time as race hygiene was in a position to furnish "exact evidence" to support its claims (which Weber did not doubt might someday come to pass), the new discipline should refrain from exaggerating the usefulness of the biological approach for the social sciences.^[79]

Years before the conference, the Krupp competition provided other social scientists with a perfect opportunity to attack the socalled biological perspective on social phenomena. Although at least one or two went so far as to dismiss the very possibility of the social sciences learning anything from Darwinian biology,^[80] most of the social scientists who bothered to enter the contest chose rather to condemn the extreme and one-sided positions adopted by Schallmayer and the other prizewinners.

The psychologist A. Vierkandt and the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies were two representatives of the social sciences who went to great lengths to attack Schallmayer's Vererbung und Aus -

lese directly. In an article bearing the caustic title "An Invasion of the Humanities by the Natural Sciences?" Vierkandt criticized Schallmayer's attempt to create an allegedly new scientific picture of social reality by using an extremely shaky intellectual construction, Weismann's theory of heredity, as the foundation.^[81] Yet even if Weismann's theories should turn out to be correct, Vierkandt maintained, Schallmayer's totally uncritical manner of transferring the concept of selection to human culture would seriously detract from the scholarly pretensions of his book: Indeed, for Vierkandt, Schallmayer's entire discussion of social phenomena suffered from a "lack of a firm and adequate sociological foundation."^[82] An examination of such difficult concepts as self-preservation, social altruism, compassion, prudery, intellect, and moral characteristics in general, was the "task of psychology and sociology," and should not be subjected to crude biological analysis. In Vierkandt's opinion, Schallmayer's entire investigation of the subject of instincts demonstrated "how a little vulgar psychology, . . . the natural ornament for scientists not professionally trained in psychology, suffices for the solution of the task."^[83] Vierkandt undoubtedly viewed Schallmayer's response to the Krupp contest as an unwelcome intrusion into his discipline.

Tönnies prefaced his protracted attack on Schallmayer with a critique of the aims and pretensions of the contest. From Tönnies' perspective, it was ludicrous to attempt to ascertain the alleged meaning of the new biology for all aspects of political and social life as long as the principles of evolutionary theory remained themselves hotly disputed among biologists.^[84] Indeed, the crude either/or wording of the contest question with respect to the inheritance of acquired traits led Tönnies to believe that the Preisausschreiben had less to do with the interest of science than with defending the political status quo. In short, the whole purpose of the contest was to prove that Darwin's theory was "politically correct."^[85]

One might well ask, as Schallmayer did, why a person who held such a cynical view of the contest would himself bother to submit an entry. In his Beiträge , Schallmayer at least suggested

that personal dissatisfaction with the outcome of the contest (Tönnies did not receive a prize) might have had something to do with the sociologist's sharp criticism of it. To be sure, Tönnies' attempt to hide the fact that he himself was a contestant at least calls into question the intellectual integrity of his attack upon Schallmayer.^[86] But unlike Woltmann's critique, Tönnies response was not occasioned primarily by wounded pride. Both the length and depth of his arguments as well as his serious attempt to familiarize himself with the basic tenets of Galton's eugenics,^[87] suggests that something more substantial than a deflated ego was at stake.

Like Vierkandt, Tönnies began his critique by accusing Schallmayer of crude selectionism in his discussion of social phenomena—a selectionism based, as he viewed it, on Schallmayer's uncritical adoption of Albert Schaeffle's analogy between the organism and the state.^[88] He then turned his attention to a critical examination of the presuppositions and desirability of Schallmayer's eugenic proposals, the main target of his verbal assault.

Despite his alleged concern for the "generative interest," Tönnies viewed Schallmayer's eugenic measures, especially the refusal to grant marriage licenses to those hopelessly unfit or temporarily infected with venereal disese, as both utopian and harmful.^[89] Laws designed to prevent dysgenic marriages or ensure that a syphlitic male did not infect his spouse would not, and could not, prevent extramarital sex and illegitimate children. The way to effectively eliminate the unfortunate hereditary consequences of venereal disease was not to legislate against the marriage of infected males, but rather to reduce prostitution. But the eventual elimination of prostitution involved elevating the social and economic status of women, particularly working-class women, and achieving social stability—conditions not to be brought about by eugenic laws but rather by an energetic social policy.^[90]

Even more than "negative eugenics," Schallmayer's plan to encourage the so-called talented groups of society to increase

their ranks deeply troubled Tönnies. Who in fact were the most talented? Tönnies attacked Schallmayer for his unproven assumption that the upper classes were necessarily fitter than other social classes. This view, Tönnies argued, was nothing more that a revised and somewhat watered down version of Ammon's doctrine of social selection, whereby class differences were linked to alleged differences in hereditary fitness.^[91] But even if it could be proven that the upper classes were intellectually better, did that automatically mean that they were morally or physically superior?^[92] To clarify his point Tönnies offered the example of shortsightedness, which occurs more frequently among the highly educated.^[93] Should talented individuals be encouraged to reproduce even if they are myopic, Tönnies asked? Indeed the real question remained: what traits should be selected? How could social policy serve to promote the biological fitness of the nation when no agreement was possible on what constituted fitness? For Tönnies, these and similar questions rendered Schallmayer's eugenics both impractical and undesirable as a means of boosting national efficiency.

Schallmayer responded speedily and forcefully to Vierkandt and Tönnies, accusing them of disciplinary tunnel vision and deliberate misrepresentation of his views. His rejoinders to the two social scientists, however, were not nearly as significant as his attempt to defend the biological view of social policy against the attacks, charges, and innuendos leveled by German social scientists in their debates with Ploetz, a task he accomplished in his Beiträge . Indeed the very title of his book, Contributions to a National Biology , was designed to call into question the traditional idea that the economic perspective was the only correct one in dealing with social and political issues. Heretofore the economic imperative had dominated the social sciences, and social policy was more or less synonymous with economic policy. But to Schallmayer economic imperatives were definitely not enough to ensure the stability of the nation, and economics could not alone solve all of Germay's problems. "The biological-hereditary wealth of the nation," he maintained, "was cer-

tainly no less valuable for the well-being and political position of the state than its material assets. . . ."^[94] The social sciences must be placed on a firm biological foundation, and the dominant economic outlook prevalent among social scientists must be replaced by a biological outlook.

In tune with the scientism of the age, Schallmayer used the opening chapter of his Beiträge to extol the virtues, importance, and power of natural science. Science not only promoted the material progress and technological advances necessary for Western hegemony^[95] but also provided significant theoretical and epistemological insights into the nature of the universe, the origins of human beings, and the nature of the human condition. The so-called Geisteswissenschaften (humanities), according to Schallmayer, could boast of no significant progress in the last hundred years, in part because of the subordinate position of science, and especially biology, in the educational curriculum—a deplorable situation for which he held the church and the classically trained humanists largely responsible.^[96] This being the case, it was hardly surprising that German social scientists lacked the critical biological insight necessary to analyze social problems.

This lack of input from biology, when combined with vested interests, prevented the "humanist sociologists," as Schallmayer labeled them, from adopting a "sociobiological" perspective, or even admitting that the social sciences, as they were presently practiced, were simply not making progress or solving any important problems. It was hard to deny, contended Schallmayer, that more criminals now walked the streets, that family law showed no sign of development, and that Germany's economic system, at least from the standpoint of preserving and stabilizing society, had little to be proud of. In addition, race hatred and doctrines of racial superiority were on the rise, threatening to divide individual countries and cause friction between nations. This, coupled with the ever-growing class hatred between rich and poor, suggested that something was wrong with the traditional social science perspective on social issues.^[97] Social policy had not, even by its own definition, solved the social question.

For Schallmayer, the social scientists' desire to increase the economic productivity of the nation without taking its biological basis into account represented a serious shortcoming of current social theory. This viewpoint was expressed most vividly in an attack upon Sombart entitled "The Sociological Importance of the Progeny of the Talented and the Inheritance of Intelligence." After lashing out at Sombart for his desire to protect his discipline from outside interests (i.e., eugenicists),^[98] Schallmayer opened fire on Sombart's theoretical presuppositions. He accused Sombart and the social scientists of assuming that national wealth alone generates culture and science, while totally neglecting the "physiological basis" or hereditary foundation of all knowledge and society.^[99] Biologically ignorant social theorists, Schallmayer maintained, either viewed this hereditary foundation as an unchanging entity, or in a crude Lamarckian fashion, as something directly affected by external conditions, including improved economic conditions.

What Sombart and others failed to realize, however, was that all social development, including an increase in economic productivity, presupposed an ever-higher level of biological fitness and hereditary talent. Consequently, it was both foolhardy and dangerous to promote an economic system or social policy which might in the long run undermine the very level of biological efficiency necessary to maintain a high level of economic productivity.^[100] Create a policy that favors the intellectually, morally, or physically inferior half of the population, and Germany's economic vitality was bound to decrease; develop instead a program that encourages the "fitter" groups in society to out-reproduce the less fit and the Reich would prosper both economically and biologically.

But Schallmayer's criticisms of Sombart and the social scientists were not limited to their ignorance of the alleged biological basis of economic efficiency. Although he shared with them an emphasis on economic efficiency and the rational management of society to achieve their common goal of preserving and strengthening of the body politic,^[101] Schallmayer's opinions differed in two very important respects. Whereas for the social

scientists economic efficiency was synonymous with national efficiency, for Schallmayer other variables less immediately related to economic productivity, such as population growth, were also critical for the long-range welfare of the nation. Moreover, whereas the social scientists believed that all impediments to national efficiency could be eliminated by social and economic measures, Schallmayer held that many of the obstacles to a strong state, such as criminality, homosexuality, suicide, and mental illness, were essentially biological in nature^[102] and could only be adequately removed by embarking on a eugenics program.

Arguing from his assumption that both the means and goals of politics presupposed a high level of hereditary fitness, Schallmayer stressed the need for social policy to become eugenic policy. For Schallmayer, a well-informed eugenic policy presupposed biologically-trained social scientists and government officials willing and able to examine all social, political, and economic institutions from the standpoint of their effectiveness in improving the overall hereditary fitness of the nation. The changes that would thereby come about were essentially the same eugenic measures to ensure that Germany maintain its position in the struggle for survival among nations envisaged by Schallmayer in Verebung und Auslese . But, most important, eugenic policy meant that biological efficiency must become the immediate goal of social policy. Only then could the common final goal of both Schallmayer and the social scientists—national efficiency—be fully realized.

Eugenics Versus Hygiene?

In contrast to the social anthropologists and academic social scientists who distanced themselves from race hygiene, several of Germany's public hygienists were among the most active members of the incipient eugenics movement. In fact one hygienist, the distinguished bacteriologist Max von Gruber (1853–1927),

went on to become chairman of the German Society for Race Hygiene in 1910. At the outset, however, many public hygienists felt professionally threatened by the so-called new hygiene. The publication of both Ploetz's Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse and Schallmayer's Vererbung und Auslese , but above all the German translation of John Haycraft's inflammatory book, Darwinism and Race Progress ,^[103] triggered a critical and defensive reaction on the part of hygienists, who viewed eugenics and its Darwinian assumptions as fundamentally at odds with the basic tenets of their discipline.

Underlying the eugenics-public hygiene controversy lay two seemingly opposed intellectual and disciplinary perspectives on the nature of social progress and national welfare.^[104] The first, the biological-Darwinian, emphasized the importance of a continuous struggle for survival under harsh conditions as a necessary prerequisite for social and cultural evolution. According to the "Darwinian" interpretation, unless the number of "unfit"—the physically, intellectually, morally, and perhaps economically weak—could be reduced, or at least held in the same proportion to the overall population, biological and social decay was inevitable.

Opposed to the "selectionist" view of progress stood a large portion of the medical profession, but above all, the tradition of public hygiene. The expressed goal of the empirical/experimental science of hygiene^[105] was to protect individuals from harmful external or environmental conditions which adversely affect health. Since health care was not only an individual but also a national concern, public hygiene played an important political role.^[106] Although hygienists had long been conscious of their critical role in safeguarding the nation's health and welfare, only in the 1880s, largely as a result of Koch's discoveries and the subsequent rise of bacteriology, did hygienic practitioners really possess the necessary theoretical and scientific knowledge to adequately fulfill their duty as custodians of the nation's health.^[107] In spite of their eventual realization of the limitations of germ theory for solving public health issues, German public

hygienists remained preoccupied with the external variables at work in disease, for example, climate, nutrition, sanitation, and living conditions. They were naturally inclined to believe that improved hygienic conditions and further medical discoveries would continue to upgrade the health and vitality of the nation.

Advocates of the two conflicting traditions clashed over the role of hygiene in the so-called degeneration problem. Eugenicists and supporters of the Darwinian perspective shocked and outraged the small community of German hygienists with their assertion that public hygiene was in large measure responsible for the progressive biological degeneration of Western society. Several prestigious medical and health-care journals such as the Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift , the Vierteljahrsschrift für Gesundheitspflege , and the Zentralblatt für allgemeine Gesundheitspflege , carried articles attacking the seemingly preposterous claims of men like Ploetz and Schallmayer. Some public hygienists publicly denied the existence of an ominous "degeneration problem."^[108] Others, insofar as they accepted the reality of biological degeneration at all, tended to blame Entartung not on modern hygienic practices but on unfavorable environmental conditions related to poverty. As one concerned adherent of this position put it, "the degeneration question is essentially a problem of nutrition."^[109]

Probably sparked in part by the publication of Vererbung und Auslese ,^[110] three prominent German hygienists employed empirical data in an attempt to settle the "degeneration problem" once and for all. Using newly available statistics on birth and death rates, infant mortality, and army recruitment, Max von Gruber, Walter Kruse, and Friedrich Prinzing sought to discredit the selectionist assumptions of the eugenicists by demonstrating a lack of any positive correlation either between high infant mortality and low child mortality,^[111] or between high infant and child mortality and military fitness. They also reiterated the importance of hygiene in bolstering national health.

According to the hygienists' interpretation of the Darwinian position, a high infant and child mortality rate should increase

the fitness of the adult population. Those who passed the initial selection period (from birth to age five), so the theory ran, should be less likely to die young, succumb to disease, or if male, be rejected for military service. Yet statistics, at least as the hygienists evaluated them, undercut this so-called selectionist premise. All three men presented evidence which directly contradicted the Darwinist position that high infant and child mortality resulted in increased military fitness. In fact, just the opposite was the case—high infant mortality went hand-in-hand with poor military fitness.^[112] Moreover, as Gruber and Prinzing pointed out, high infant mortality did not favorably affect the future health of a population: it neither resulted in a lower child or adult mortality rate, nor reduced the percentage of adult cases of tuberculosis.^[113] Indeed in Greenland, where the harsh struggle for survival should have produced individuals perfectly suited to their environment, childhood death and adult diseases were more common than among Western peoples. Although more than a quarter of all Greenland Eskimo infants died before the age of one, the mortality rate of adult Eskimos was three to four times the rate of Danes of the same age. How could Darwinists explain such unfortunate medical facts? Did "Eskimos still have too much hygiene?" Gruber questioned sarcastically.^[114] Obiously, since infant mortality did not serve to improve the race, the Darwinists had no right to call into question the long-range biological implication of hygienic and medical practices aimed at lowering the number of infant and early childhood deaths.^[115]

In addition to challenging the selectionist argument that high infant mortality benefited the race, the hygienists, in good Lamarckian fashion, stressed the importance of improved hygienic measures, better living conditions and, above all, the control of infectious diseases in promoting biological fitness. Kruse argued that the sharp reduction in the number of deaths resulting from infectious diseases over the past twenty years suggested an increase, not a decrease, in biological strength and vitality.^[116] Moreover, contrary to the claims of the Darwinists,

the hygienists asserted that harmful environmental conditions, especially contagious diseases, kept biological efficiency at a lower level than necessary. How many fatal illnesses, contended Gruber, resulted not from any deficiency in hereditary fitness but rather from noxious agents and "infectious germs" against which all individuals stood defenseless? And how many individuals became unfit not by virtue of inferior hereditary material, but only because they were improperly fed either before or after birth?^[117] Stressing the importance of nutrition as a prophylactic against degeneration, Gruber even went so far as to suggest that one could raise the average biological quality of a population without improving its hereditary substrate by simply upgrading the diet of all individuals.^[118] Indeed most hygienists agreed with Gruber that, insofar as public hygiene sought to eliminate hazardous environmental conditions, it benefited not just the "weak" but all members of society. To avoid degeneration and improve the health of the nation, more hygiene, not less, was needed.^[119]

The hygienists' attack on Darwinism, their unwillingness to take the issue of degeneration seriously, and their insistence that hygiene did no long-term biological damage to the race, undoubtedly deeply troubled Schallmayer. Especially disturbing, indeed insulting to Schallmayer, was the hygienists' suggestion that Darwinists were heartless enemies of public hygiene who reveled in statistics of high infant mortality.^[120] Refutations of individual arguments made by the three men notwithstanding, Schallmayer's rejoinder to the hygienists focused on two main issues: first, that eugenicists were not anti-hygiene and did not envisage high infant mortality as the proper means of achieving biological efficiency; and second, that degeneration and its opposite, biological fitness, was linked to and could only be properly understood in terms of changes in the hereditary substrate of a population.

Regarding the first point, Schallmayer quickly pointed out that eugenicists were far more concerned about intellectual and moral degeneration than they were about any increase in the

number of physically unfit owing to hygiene.^[121] That having been said, however, he insisted that one could still believe that high infant mortality played a selective role (albeit a relatively small one) in the life-process of nations, yet refuse to applaud or even tolerate such a ruthless form of selection.

Upon examination of the facts and arguments both for and against a selective role for child mortality, we see that it does possess some selective effect. It does not follow, however, from the social eugenic standpoint, that the reduction of this imperfect and brutal method of selection should be regretted or combatted. . . . This inefficient and relatively unproductive method of natural selection cannot only be replaced, but even overcompensated for, by a rational social management of reproduction which is neither cruel nor injurious to our concepts of human integrity.^[122]

Just as "no feeling human being" could oppose therapeutic medicine for preserving the life of the unfit, so too could no humane individual reject public hygiene simply because it was sometimes counterselective. Schallmayer challenged the hygienists to give an example of even one Darwinist or eugenicist who publicly repudiated the aims of hygiene. Such an individual, Schallmayer suggested, if indeed he existed, would be in need of a psychiatrist.^[123] Even the extremist John Haycraft, when properly understood, could not be said to be against hygienic measures. "The eugenicist's ideal," maintained Schallmayer, "cannot be the return to an emphasis on natural selection, but rather the replacement of culturally-hemmed natural selection through the perfection of sexual or germinal selection."^[124]

Schallmayer also chastised the hygienists for their alleged misinterpretation of the degeneration problem. Particularly exasperating from Schallmayer's point of view were comments made by Gruber annd Kruse to the effect that Entartung was not limited to hereditary traits.^[125] Moreover, owing to their conscious or unconscious Lamarckism, the hygienists employed the term degeneration to describe all unfavorable changes in the physical and mental composition of either an individual or a population,

ignoring the important Weismannian distinction between "somatic" changes—changes that do not alter the germ-plasm and are therefore not inherited—and true heredity modifications.^[126] For Schallmayer, the term Entartung could only be applied to heredity traits and referred only to a negative change in the hereditary material of an individual or group. In an attempt to clarify the issue he offered the following definition of the often poorly understood concept.

Degeneration . . . is a generational hereditary development accompanied by a deterioration of the functional efficiency of one or more physical or mental organs, which results in future generations becoming less adapted to their living conditions. . . . National degeneration [Volksentartung ] means a decline in the average hereditary qualities of a people such that its overall fitness with respect to the demands necessitated by the struggle for survival is diminished.^[127]

"Generative degeneration," Schallmayer added, occurred not only when external conditions were too favorable but also when they were so severe that no individual's germ-plasm could withstand them without appreciable damage. For Schallmayer, this explained why the Greenland Eskimos, despite their subjection to a most rigorous selection, did not demonstrate a high degree of fitness.^[128]

More significant for an understanding of the development of Schallmayer's ideas than his reply to Kruse, Prinzing, and Gruber was his reaction to Alfred Grotjahn's important work Sociale Pathologie (Social Pathology). Grotjahn was a leader of the turn-of-the-century movement to create a separate discipline of social hygiene independent of the then-dominant experimental-biological tradition. He was also the first hygienist to recognize publicly the legitimacy of the "race hygiene" perspective, and was instrumental during the Wilhelmine and Weimar years in drumming up support for eugenics among his professional colleagues.^[129] Although Schallmayer greatly admired Grotjahn for his pioneering theoretical work in the field of social hygiene, and appreciated his dedication to the cause of eugenics, he rejected

Grotjahn's classification of eugenics as a subdiscipline of social hygiene.^[130]

Schallmayer found Grotjahn's view of the relationship between race hygiene and social hygiene unacceptable for one very important reason: by and large, the two hygienes strove toward different immediate (if not final) goals and employed dissimilar means to achieve their ends. Race hygiene, according to Schallmayer, was solely concerned with the hereditary fitness of a population—the quality of its inherited germ-plasm—and had as its aim the largest possible increase of "good" hereditary traits, and the largest possible decrease, if not total elimination, of "undesirable" characteristics. This goal was to be achieved primarily by altering social policy and social institutions in such a way as to encourage the so-called fitter portion of the population to out reproduce those deemed "less fit" or "unfit." Social hygiene, however, strove merely to ensure the best possible development of already existing traits. On the whole, it achieved its goal by creating a highly favorable environment or living conditions for a given population.^[131] Employing the most up-to-date biological terminology, Schallmayer explained the difference as follows: eugenics represented "genotype hygiene" whereas social hygiene was equivalent to "phenotype hygiene."^[132]

Besides having different ends and means, the two hygienes served different constituents. Race hygiene benefited future generations far more than it did the present generation; social hygiene aided only those presently alive and possibly their immediate descendants.^[133] This difference was closely linked, Schallmayer maintained, to the dissimilarities and conflicts between what he called Sozialinteresse (social interest) and Rasseinteresse (racial or hereditary interest). An institution or measure—military recruitment for example—could be extremely valuable for the short-term social interest, yet be quite harmful from the long-term racial or hereditary perspective. In such cases of conflict national leaders were naturally faced with a tough decision. Although in principle the Rasseinteresse should always take precedence over the Sozialinteresse, in practice the basic social

needs of society must first be met before the long-term racial interest could be addressed.^[134] Making an intelligent judgment when conflicts between the two arise required, Schallmayer emphasized, "an improvement and expansion of sociological and socio-biological learning." He hoped that state officials and politicians would soon acquire the requisite knowledge necessary to make such important decisions.^[135]

Owing to the fundamental differences between race hygiene and social hygiene with respect to goals, methods, and beneficiaries, neither field could be legitimately considered a subspecialty of the other; each, Schallmayer asserted, was an independent discipline with its own aims and programs.^[136] Yet despite their basic dissimilarities, the two hygienes' separate interests occasionally overlapped. Both eugenics and social hygiene strove to reduce or eliminate harmful external agents such as alcohol, toxic chemicals, and bacteria-producing congenital diseases which impair both the health of an individual as well as his or her germ-plasm.^[137] Moreover, the practitioners of the two disciplines, at least in some respects, shared the same premises and intellectual outlook. Schallmayer certainly would have agreed with the statement of the eminent social hygienist Alfons Fischer that "prophylaxis is the physician's true domain."^[138] One can safely say that social hygienists and eugenicists alike stressed the superiority of preventive medicine over therapeutics, and viewed their disciplines as prophylactic. In fact, although race hygiene was largely a reaction against the one-sided public preoccupation with the successes of the newest subspecialty of hygiene, bacteriology, the possibilities which bacteriology held out for a truly effective preventive medicine gave eugenicists like Schallmayer reason to believe that they too could eradicate disease once and for all instead of merely treating it. Despite differences in their methodology and focus of attention (hygienists concentrated on the carrier of disease, eugenicists on the bodily constitution), eugenicists and hygienists shared a common belief in and were influenced by the prevailing ideology of scientific medicine. In addition, practitioners of the two

hygienes shared a common attitude about the relationship between health and society. Both sought to regulate social policy in such a way that it furthered the health of the nation, however differently they interpreted the term health. And finally, as medical professionals, eugenicists and social hygienists were both conscious of their social and political role as guardians of the nation's health and well-being—although each believed that it made the more important contribution to the cause.

Their common presuppositions concerning the political role of the medical professional, the relationship between health and society, and the importance of preventive medicine may explain why so many hygienists, once convinced that eugenics did not seek to put them out of business, became actively involved in the race hygiene movement. Certainly many hygienists must have come to the same position as Max von Gruber that race hygiene was both a prerequisite for and an extension of any long-term social hygiene program.^[139] At any rate, Schallmayer himself was convinced of the necessity of both hygienes, since both—albeit in different ways and in varying degrees—promoted national efficiency.

For Schallmayer, eugenics and social hygiene were part of a larger overarching "biological policy" or "national biology"—a systematic program to upgrade the biological fitness of the nation.^[140] This program can be graphically portrayed as shown in figure 1.^[141] As indicated by the sketch, race hygiene together with personal and social hygiene, comprised what Schallmayer termed "qualitative population policy." As the name suggests, this part of Schallmayer's biological policy had as its aim the improvement of the biological quality of the population. One portion of qualitative population policy, namely eugenics, served the racial or hereditary interest; the other part, personal or social hygiene, benefited the immediate social interest. The other half of biological policy, quantitative population policy, sought to regulate social institutions and practices such that they promoted the largest possible increase in population. Here the emphasis was on quantity, not quality of population—with one

Figure 1.

part enhancing the racial hereditary interest, the other merely aiding the social interest.

Schallmayer's biological policy or national biology was a comprehensive plan to help boost national efficiency. Indeed he designed all his programmatic statements with the same goal in mind. His insistence, for example, that eugenics refrain from ideologies of Aryan supremacy was rooted in his belief that no one anthropological race had a monopoly on useful hereditary traits. The difference between the social productivity of two individuals of the same race could far exceed that of any two individuals belonging to different races. Schallmayer's demand that

social policy become race hygiene policy also reveals his preoccupation with national efficiency. Only by promoting biological efficiency, Schallmayer asserted, could the eugenicists' and socal scientists' common desire for a strong and stable state be fully realized. And, finally, underlying both Schallmayer's support of public or social hygiene and his effort to convince hygienic practitioners that race hygiene was not their enemy was his firm belief that both hygienes, their fundamental differences notwithstanding, aided the cause of national efficiency.

Thus far we have examined Schallmayer's "qualitative population policy." After 1908, and especially during World War I, however, Schallmayer and the incipient eugenics movement became particularly involved with the other pillar of biological policy: "quantitative population policy." The origins of Schallmayer's interest in the population question and his formulation of a "population policy" is the subject of the next chapter.