Alfred Ploetz

Alfred Ploetz (August 22, 1860 – March 20, 1940) was a German physician, biologist and eugenicist known for coining the term racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene)[1] and promoting the concept in Germany. Rassenhygiene is a form of eugenics.

Alfred Ploetz

Life and career

Alfred Ploetz was born in Swinemünde, Germany (now Świnoujście, Poland) and he grew up and attended school in Breslau (now Wrocław). At this time he began his friendship with Carl Hauptmann, brother of the famous author Gerhart Hauptmann. In 1879 he founded a secret racial youth society. In Gerhart Hauptmann's Drama "Vor Sonnenaufgang" (Before Sunrise) which was first performed on October 20, 1889, in Berlin, the key figure of the journalist Loth is based on Ploetz.

After school Ploetz at first studied political economy in Breslau. There he joined the "Freie wissenschaftliche Vereinigung" (free scientific union). Among his friends were – besides his brother – his former school friend Ferdinand Simon (later son-in-law of August Bebel), the brothers Carl and Gerhart Hauptmann, Heinrich Laux, and Charles Proteus Steinmetz.

This circle enthusiastically read the works of Ernst Haeckel and Charles Darwin. Carl Hauptmann was a student of Ernst Haeckel, and Gerhart Hauptmann and Ploetz attended some of his lectures. The group expanded and developed a plan of founding a colony in one of the pacific states and established itself as the "Pacific association". They planned a "community on friendly, socialist and maybe also pan-Germanic basis". In consequence of the prosecution of socialistically minded persons in application of Otto von Bismarck's anti-socialist laws (1878–1890), in 1883 Ploetz fled to Zurich, where he continued to study political economy with Julius Platter (1844–1923). In his memoirs Ploetz states as an important reason for his choice of Zurich that in his studies in Breslau socialist theories were only incidentally mentioned.

After living for a half a year in the United States, Ploetz returned to Zurich and began to study medicine. In 1886, he fell in love with a fellow student Agnes Bluhm despite being involved with Pauline Rüdin. They decided to get married early in 1887. Ploetz was also seeing an American named Mary Sherwood who was studying hypnotism. In 1890 Ploetz became medical doctor and married his former girlfriend Pauline, though the two never had children. Bluhm however kept Ploetz as a close friend throughout her life and they both shared similar views on racial purity and the benefits of eugenics.[2] Ploetz and his wife lived in the US for four years, and divorced in 1898. Ploetz later married Anita Nordenholz. This marriage produced three children: Ulrich (called Uli), Cordelia (called Deda) and Wilfrid (called Fridl, 1912–2013).[3]

Ploetz first proposed the theory of racial hygiene (race-based eugenics) in his "Racial Hygiene Basics" (Grundlinien einer Rassenhygiene) in 1895. In 1904 Ploetz founded the periodical "Archiv für Rassen-und Gesellschaftsbiologie" with Fritz Lenz as chief editor, and in 1905 the German Society for Racial Hygiene (De Berliner Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene) [4] with 31 members. page [5] In 1907 the society became the "International Society for Racial Hygiene".[6]

Nazi Germany
This poster (from around 1938) reads: "60,000 Reichsmark is what this person suffering from a hereditary defect costs the People's community during his lifetime. Fellow citizen, that is your money too. Read '[A] New People', the monthly magazine of the Bureau for Race Politics of the NSDAP."

In 1930 he was made an honorary doctor of the University of Munich and became a supporter of the Nazi Party, which was elected to power in 1933. Ploetz wrote in April that year that he believed Hitler would bring racial hygiene from its previous marginality into the mainstream. In 1933 Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick established an "expert advisory committee for population and racial policy," which included Ploetz, Fritz Lenz, Ernst Rüdin and Hans F.K. Günther. This expert advisory committee had the task of advising the Nazis on the implementation and enforcement of legislation regarding racial and eugenic issues.[7] In 1936, Hitler appointed Ploetz to a professorship.

In 1937, when he was aged 77, he joined the Nazi party.[8]

He died in 1940 at the age of 79 and is buried at his home in Herrsching on the Ammersee in Bavaria. After his death, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer praised his "inner sympathy and enthusiasm [with] the National Socialist Movement".[9] Ernst Rüdin, also a committed National Socialist, praised Ploetz two years before as a man "by his meritorious services has helped to set up our Nazi ideology."[10]

Theories

In his book The efficiency of our race and the protection of the weak (1895) he described a society in which eugenic ideas were applied. Society would examine the moral and intellectual capacity of citizens to decide on marriage and the permitted number of children. It may also include a prohibition on reproduction. Disabled children are euthanized at birth, while every young person would undergo an examination at puberty to determine if they would be permitted to marry and have children. Society would be regulated strictly to insure equal opportunity. Those who failed would starve. Ploetz found this idea horrible, and suggested as a humane alternative simply encouraging only "fit" people to reproduce, though he said this was a weak proposal.[11]

Along with many other eugenicists in Europe and America, Ploetz believed in the superiority of the Nordic race. His writings were a major influence on Nazi ideology. His opinion of the Jewish Question changed during the course of his life, but his view and the doctrine of the NSDAP were in accord by the time the party came to power in 1933.

In his early writings Ploetz credited Jews as the second highest cultural race after Europeans.[12] He identified no substantial difference in "racial character" between Aryans and Jews, arguing that the mental abilities of Jews and their role in the development of human culture made them indispensable to the "process of racial mix" which would enhance humanity.

The high aptitude of the Jews and their outstanding role in the progress of mankind considering men like Jesus, Spinoza, Marx has to be kindly acknowledged without hesitation... All this Antisemitism is a flop which will vanish slowly in the light of scientific knowledge and a humane democracy".[13]

Later he revised this view. He stressed that the distinctiveness of Jews indicated that their mental characteristics would adversely affect Aryans by introducing individualism and lack of love for the military and the nation. He favored the global dominance of the Aryan race.[14]

Bibliography
  • (Alfred Hoche, Alfred Ploetz, Alfred Vierkandt, Carl Hans Heinze Sennhenn) German Eugenicists: ISBN 9781230541914 [15]
  • (Alfred J Ploetz) Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen ISBN 1103490796 [16]
  • (Alfred J Ploetz) Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, einschliesslich Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Hygiene 1908, Fuenfter Jahrgang ISBN 117441166X [17]

See also

References
  1. Bashford, Alison; Levine, Phillipa, eds. (2010). "Eugenics and the Modern World". The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Oxford University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0199945054. Retrieved 6 August 2015.
  2. Weindling, Paul (1993). Health, race, and German politics between national unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (1st pbk. ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 74. ISBN 052142397X.
  3. "Anzeige von Wilfrid Ploetz". merkur-online.de. Archived from the original on 2014-06-20.
  4. "Mystiek Antisemitisme Waar Sprookjes En Wetenschap Elkaar Ontmoeten". Internet Archive.
  5. Schafft, Gretchen Engle: "From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich". University of Illinois Press. 2004. Pg. 42.
  6. Atkins, Stephen E. (2009). Holocaust Denial as an International Movement. Greenwood Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-0313345388.
  7. Anahid S. Rickman: "Rassenpflege im völkischen Staat", Vom Verhältnis der Rassenhygiene zur nationalsozialistischen Politik. Dissertation Bonn 2002, Online einsehbar unter [3], p. 331
  8. Federal Archives Act Party Zehlendorf.
  9. Otmar von Verschuer, "Alfred Ploetz," in The Erbarzt, Bd 8 p.69-72, 1940, p.71
  10. Ernst Rudin: "Honor of Prof. Dr. Alfred Ploetz," in ARGB, Bd 32 / S.473–474, 1938, p.474
  11. "Die Tüchtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen", 1893, p. 144-47. cited by The descent of Darwin: the popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914, Alfred Kelly, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press 1981, ISBN 0-807-81460-1, p. 107
  12. "Wir haben frueher die Juden neben den Westariern als hoechstentwickelte Culturrasse angefuehrt." Ploetz, 137
  13. "Die Tüchtigkeit unserer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen", 1893, p. 141, 142. cited by Massimo Ferari Zumbini: The roots of evil. Gründerjahre des Antisemitismus: Von der Bismarckzeit zu Hitler, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a. M. 2003, ISBN 3-465-03222-5, p.406
  14. Julia Schäfer: "Vermessen – gezeichnet – verlacht Judenbilder in populären Zeitschriften 1918–1933." Campus Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-593-37745-4, p. 182
  15. Wikipedia, Source (September 2013). German Eugenicists. ISBN 9781230541914.
  16. Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen: Alfred J. Ploetz: 9781103490790: Amazon.com: Books. ISBN 1103490796.
  17. Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Biologie, einschliesslich Rassen- und Gesellschafts-Hygiene 1908, Fuenfter Jahrgang (German Edition): Alfred J. Ploetz, Ludwig Plate, A Nordenholz: 9781174411663: Amazon.com: Books. ISBN 117441166X.
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