Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg Memorial Website
    
   Eugenics
    
   Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer
   
 
  Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (July 16, 1896 – August 8, 1969) 
  was a German human-biologist and eugenicist concerned primarily 
  with "racial hygiene" and Nazi twin research. 
  1, 2, 3, 4
  He became Secretary, German Society for Race Hygiene (Tübingen) 
  in 1924, and worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, 
  Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A or KWIfA) in Dahlem, Berlin, 
  from its founding in 1927 until its dissolution in 1945: first as 
  director of the Department of Human Genetics, then as director of 
  the Division on Twin Research, finally succeeding Eugen Fischer as 
  Director of the KWI-A in 1942. 5
  He was also associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Genetic 
  Biology and Racial Hygiene (Institut fur Erbbiologie und 
  Rassenhygiene). Verschuer did not formally join the Nazi party 
  until 1940, 6 but he participated 
  in activities that strongly advanced the Nazi agenda to protect Nordic 
  peoples (Aryans) from ‘contamination’ by ‘inferior races’, then, at 
  the close of the war and beyond, hid or destroyed the record of those 
  activities and other activities carried on by KWI-A personnel. 
 
  .
 
  Two of Verschuer's most well-known assistants were 
  Karin Magnussen 7
  and Josef Mengele. 8
  Karin Magnussen studied eyes from living twins at Auschwitz harvested 
  for her by Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele was a Schutzstaffel (SS) 
  physician at the Auschwitz death camp who later became known as the 
  "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz. 9
 
 
  Sterilization
 
  Verschuer argued in principle for the eugenic sterilization of the 
  "feeble-minded, schizophrenics, the manic depressive, epileptics, 
  psychopaths, chorea sufferers, the congenitally blind and deaf-mute, 
  whereby he qualified his statement by referring to the uncertain 
  prognosis of heredity in such cases as manic-depressive insanity, 
  epilepsy, and deaf-mutism." 10
  He expressed the opinion that this issue had a moral, theological 
  aspect. Eugenic sterilization (which Verschuer equated with medical 
  curative treatment) was "no 'unauthorized intervention into the 
  natural process of creation;' the willingness to make oneself sterile 
  is rather a command of Christian charity. The fulcrum and hub of the 
  argumentation comprised the concept of 'sacrifice':
 
  .
 
  "It is demanded of us Christians, who follow the example of our 
  master, that we be willing to sacrifice our lives in the service 
  of Christian charity. Christian charity extends to children who 
  will be born. We are therefore obligated to extend the circle of 
  humans to those who are not yet born, and I believe it is justified 
  to demand from people a lesser sacrifice than the sacrifice of life, 
  namely to forego having children, for the love of children that are 
  expected to be diseased, so that from the perspective of Christian 
  charity sterilization must be regarded as justified." 
  11
 
  .
 
  According to sections 263 and 264 of the 1927 General German Penal 
  Code, "... sterilizations with a medical indication would remain 
  exempt from punishment... in accordance with section 263 (as the 
  practice of a conscientious doctor), or in accordance with section 
  264 (as not contra bona mores),...". 12
 
  .
 
  Reasons for sterilization included the "high probability that the 
  offspring would suffer from serious physical or mental genetic 
  defects", such as: 13
  
   -  
     congenital feeble-mindedness
   
-  
     schizophrenia
   
-  
     manic-depressive insanity
   
-  
     hereditary epilepsy
   
-  
     hereditary St. Vitus's dance (Huntington's Chorea)
   
-  
     hereditary blindness
   
-  
     hereditary deafness
   
-  
     "serious hereditary physical deformities"
   
-  
     "serious alcoholism"
  
 
  .
 
   These attitudes toward sterilization were unsurprising, as 
   eugenics is about racial 'hygiene': the purification process 
   whereby 'genetically defective' people (because of race, 
   mental illness, epilepsy, criminality) are removed from the 
   volk ("people", or nation). 
 
  .
 
   Most cities in Germany developed plans to carry out the 
   new sterilization law. Frankfurt am Main set up an 
   Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene at 
   Frankfurt University, and asked Verschuer to become its 
   director. Verschuer took the post in 1935, while also 
   remaining associated with the KWI-A.
 
  .
 
   "[Verschuer] was enthusiastic about the new law and its results.
 
  .
 
  "'We know today that the life of a Volk is only guaranteed 
  when the racial uniqueness and hereditary health of the gene 
  pool ... is maintained. The nub of the population policy in 
  the Third Reich is therefore: hereditary and racial care or 
  hygiene. ...
 
  .
 
  "'The National Socialistic State with exceptional energy has
  assumed [the responsibility] for the practical administration 
  of hereditary and racial care. The first goal was the fight 
  against racial alienation through the Jews. The second deed 
  is the damming up [i.e., sterilization] of those with 
  hereditary illnesses through the Law for Prevention of 
  Congenitally Ill Progeny. In the two years since [this law] 
  has been in place, approximately 100,000 sterilizations have
  been carried out.'"
 
  .
 
  "Verschuer, being an enthusiastic Nazi and well positioned 
  in the apparatus, consolidated all the tasks of the new law 
  under his control." 14
 
  .
 
  In 1941, an assistant of Verschuer's at Frankfurt University,
  Dr. Hans Greve, was asked to evaluate a Gypsy woman whom a German
  soldier wanted to marry, so that she might obtain a document stating
  her "fitness" for marriage (Ehetauglichkeitszeugnis). Initially
  Grebe stated that she was unfit because, as a mixed Gypsy, she was
  "feeble minded". Upon this finding the Genetic Health Court in Frankfurt
  had to decide whether the woman had to be sterilized. Twice the court
  concluded that the woman was not mentally retarded and thus did
  not have to be sterilized; twice, Verschuer appealed:
 
  .
 
  "Von Verschuer knew that a law was in preparation which would demand the
  sterilization of all mixed Gypsies. This law had been stopped by
  the Department of Justics. So the Department of the Interior, which
  pushed the law through, relied in the meantime upon the trick of calling all
  mixed Gypsies mentally retarded. Von Verschuer alerted the Department of
  the Interior to the scandalous behaviour of the Frankfurt court. Dr Herbert 
  Linden from the Department of the Interior indeed wrote a letter asking
  for the sterilisation of all mixed Gypsies on the grounds of a special
  type of mental retardation, sometimes difficult to diagnose. Von Verschuer
  sent a copy of this letter to the Frankfurt court and so asked a third
  time to sterilise the woman. ... the Frankfurt psychiatrist von Kleist ...
  could not find mental retardation. So the court came, in its third and
  final decision, to the conclusion not to sterilise the Gypsy woman." 15
 
  .
  "Positive" Eugenics
 
  Verschuer opposed euthanasia to some degree. He also opposed 
  the idea of breeding supermen. 16
  However, he was a supporter of "positive" eugenics: incentives 
  to favor the propagation of Aryans. In 1933 he wrote an article 
  in August/September issue of the newsletter Soziale 
  Arbeitsgemeinschaft evangelischer Manner und Frauen Thuringens, 
  which emphasized education and training, tax legislation, control 
  of immigration and emigration, genetic biological stock-taking and 
  marriage counseling for prospective parents, but also indirectly 
  demanded bars to marriage for "those of alien ancestry," "ill and 
  deformed persons and the genetically ill from encumbered families." 
  He mentioned sterilization, but "only in passing."
  17
 
  Miscegenation
 
  Verschuer felt that that when a superior race mixes with an 
  inferior race (mulattos), it always brings the superior race 
  down. He noted two exceptions to this, however: Booker T. Washington 
  and Alexander Pushkin:
 
 
  "The crossing of intellectually very capable races with 
  intellectually less capable ones, e.g. Europeans with Negroes, 
  yields a product that is between these races intellectually [...] 
  Occasionally, an individual half-breed of this kind can also be 
  strikingly intellectually capable (Pushkin, Washington), as is to 
  be expected from the laws of heredity. The assumption that half-breeds 
  are always worse than both parents intellectually -- or even morally -- 
  is incorrect." 18
 
  Twin research and medical atrocities
 
  Twin research was important because it established a connection 
  between race with eugenics and studies of twins. Nazi twin studies 
  was in fact a somewhat unscientific way of studying genetics, in a 
  way that could be easily be manipulated to manufacture tailor-made 
  results. Once Fischer retired from the KWI-A, Verschuer became the 
  new Director, continuing twin study (with subordinates Siegfried 
  Liebau and Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, and Karin Magnussen at Dahlem) 
  from a somewhat different perspective that may have been more than 
  a renaming: phenogenetics. Phenogenetics included environmental 
  relationships both before and after birth.
 
  .
 
  Verschuer received Heinrich Himmler's permission to work in 
  Auschwitz from 1944 on. In a report to the German Research Council 
  (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; DFG) from 1944, Verschuer 
  talked about Mengele's assistance in supplying the KWIfA with some 
  "scientific materials" from Auschwitz:
 
  .
 
  "My assistant, Dr. Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) has joined me in this 
  branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmfuhrer 
  and camp physician in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. 
  Anthropological investigations on the most diverse racial groups 
  of this concentration camp are being carried out with permission 
  of the SS Reichsfuhrer [Himmler]; the blood samples are being 
  sent to my laboratory for analysis."
 
  .
 
  Verschuer also noted in the report that the war conditions had 
  made it difficult for the KWI-A to procure "twin materials" for 
  study, and that Mengele's unique position at Auschwitz offered 
  a special opportunity in this respect. (In the summer of 1944, 
  Mengele and his Jewish slave assistant Dr. Miklos Nyiszli sent   
  other "scientific materials" to the KWI-A, including the bodies 
  of murdered Romani people (Gypsies), internal organs of dead 
  children, skeletons of two murdered Jews, and blood samples of 
  twins infected by Mengele with typhus.)
 
  Genocide of Jews and Gypsies
 
  "In his talk about the "Race Biology of the Jews" Verschuer 
  contradicted the generally accepted idea that Jews could be 
  recognized by the shape of their nose or their blood group. 
  Instead he referred to the emerging science of comparative 
  race pathology . A number of illnesses and disorders occurred 
  more frequently in Jews than among the non-Jewish population: 
  diabetes, neuroses, flat feet, myonomes, xeroderma pegmentosum,   
  hemophilia, and deaf-mutedness. 'Amarotic idiocy' (Tay-Sach-s 
  syndrome) and torsion dystonia are particularly prevalent among 
  the Eastern European Jews. To explain this phenomenon Verschuer 
  advanced population-genetic argumentation: Through conscious 
  segregation from their "host volk" the Jews had '"bred" their  
  race themselves' in genetic isolation."
 
  .
 
  "... he described attributes that were supposedly typical for 
  the Jewish population, including dispositions for and resistance 
  against certain illnesses, emphasized the 'Jew's need for doctors 
  and fear of illness' and even referred to allegedly specific forms 
  of criminality: '[...] the Jews showed a reduced rate of crime for   
  assault and theft, but penalties were considerably above average 
  for defamation, fraud and forgery [...].' As an explanation, 
  Verschuer, picking up on Fischer, alleged 'that the typical 
  characteristics for today's Jew are mainly derived from the Near 
  Eastern-Oriental basic stock,' which had 'experienced a certain 
  loosening up' through miscegnation." -- 19
 
  .
 
  "... Fischer and Verschuer ... were guests of honor to a working 
  congress at the inauguration of the 'Frankfurt Institute for the 
  Investigation of the Jewish Question' ... on March 27/28, 1941. 
  The aspired goal of the 'total solution' to the 'Jewish qustion,' 
  as was bluntly stated here, was the Volkstod ('death of   
  the nation'). The economist Peter-Heinz Seraphim (1902-1979) 
  pointed out for consideration that the deportation for forced 
  labor in camps in Poland or an overseas colony could also have 
  the consequence of 'social pauperization and upheaval,' but 'by 
  no means the physical self-disintegration of Jewry, for the death 
  of a nation is never a fast death.' ... 20
 
  Erasing the KWI-A record (1945)
 
  As the war was drawing to a close in 1945, Verschuer moved the 
  files of the KWI-A from Dahlem to his own home, hoping for a 
  more favorable response from the advancing Allied armies than 
  from the advancing Soviet Army. 
 
  .
 
  "On February 3, 1945, a directive was issued by ... Albert Speer
  ... to the operations staff of the KWG, instructing that the 
  institutes under its control be relocated from endangered areas. 
  Ernst Telschow forwarded this directive to the KWI-A, where it 
  arrived on February 5 ... Had it been ... Verschuer's express   
  goal to hold out in Dahlem as long as possible and await the 
  further course of events ... by February 1945 it must have been 
  clear to him that the fall of Berlin was merely a matter of time. 
  Relocating the institute appeared imperative, and in secret 
  Verschuer already had begun the preparations for a move. 
  (Verschuer to Lenz, 9/2/1945, MPG Archive, Dept. III, rep. 86 B, 
  No. 12.) So Speer's directive came at just the right time ... "
 
  .
 
  Later, however, Telschow "informed Verschuer orally that Speer 
  'in retrospect [had] not desired' the 'application of the 
  relocation of the KWI-A directive' to the KWI-A. ... Thus it 
  can be presumed that Verschuer was quite aware that he had 
  received a green light to relocate his institute neither from 
  the General Administration nor from the Armaments Ministry. 
  However, when Engelhardt Buhler ... managed to organize a   
  trailer truck around February 9, 1945 -- to everyone's surprise, 
  Verschuer acted without delay, supported by Speer's written 
  command to relocate, abruptly overrode the oral counter-command 
  communicated by Telschow and set the relocation in motion. On 
  February 12, 1945, when part of the material sent to Beetz had 
  already been loaded on the truck, he sent a circular to the 
  department heads Abel, Diehl, Gottschaldt, Lenz, and Nachtsheim,   
  officially informing them  that the majority of the institute's 
  inventory was to be relocated to his family estate in Solz near 
  Bebra."
 
  .
 
  "Verschuer confirmed that some of the material involved was 
  'secret files, which by no means may fall into enemy hands,' 
  asked Nachtsheim to attend to the matter and to give the 
  caretaker the order to burn the material 'in good time'. 
 
  .
 
  "On February 17, 1945 Verschuer laconically informed the 
  General Administration that the relocation of the institute 
  to Solz had been completed 'without significant inconvenience.'"
 
  .
 
  "In the end, the KWI-A was left with two rooms of the Haus 
  am See, in which institute property -- 'numerous scientific 
  apparatus, including special fabrications [...] valuable optics, 
  microtome, projection equipment, part of the scientific library, 
  the twin archive and additional scientific materials' -- were 
  stored. Karl Diehl managed to rescue some of these materials in 
  September 1945 when the building was requisitioned for good by 
  the Soviet military authorities." 21
 
  .
 
  "Interestingly enough, the correspondence between Verschuer 
  and Fischer is missing from the archives for the period in 
  which they continued to correspond about their presentation 
  of 'facts' to the denazification offices. ... "
  22
  Indeed, even now it is difficult or impossible to access 
  records during this period. See:
    
  
   http://www.esthermlederberg.com/Eugenics (Anecdotes)/Research Materials Max Planck Society Archive.html
  
 
  How did Otmar Verschuer avoid prosecution as a war criminal?
 
  Verschuer was never tried for war crimes despite many indications 
  that he not only was fully cognisant of Mengele's work at Auschwitz, 
  but even encouraged and collaborated with Mengele in some of his 
  most grisly research. However solid evidence of Verschuer's willing 
  collaboration could not be established, much to the disappointment 
  of the principal post-war Allied investigator, Leo Alexander, 
  assigned to his case. In a letter to his wife from 1946, Alexander 
  wrote:
 
  .
 
  It sometimes seems as if the Nazis had taken special pains in 
  making practically every nightmare come true. Some new evidence 
  has come in where two doctors in Berlin, one a man and the other 
  a woman, collected eyes of different colour. It seems that the 
  concentration camps were combed for people whose one eye had a 
  slightly different color than the other. Who ever [sic] was 
  unlucky enough to possess such a pair of slightly unequal eyes 
  had them cut out and was killed, the eyes being sent to Berlin. 
  This is the carrying out into reality of an old gruesome German 
  fairy tale which is included in the Tales of Hoffmann, where Dr.   
  Coppelius posing as a sandman comes at night and cuts out 
  children's eyes when they are tired. The grim part of the story 
  is that Doctors von Verschuer and Magnussen in Berlin did prefer 
  children and particularly twins. There is no end to this 
  nightmare, at least 23 are being tried now and, I trust, the 
  others will follow later.
 
  .
 
  Alexander initiated investigations into the location of the 
  incriminating collection but could not locate it—it had 
  been sent to an unknown destination in Berlin and from there 
  vanished out of sight; Alexander ruefully concluded that 
  Verschuer had destroyed it.
 
  .
 
  Later investigators had difficulty getting hard evidence of 
  the gruesome role they felt Verschuer played in the Holocaust. 
 
  .
 
  Otto Hahn set up a commission at the Kaiser Wilhelm Society 
  (KWG) to investigate charges against Verschuer. Under the 
  leadership of a judge, Kurt von Lewinski of the KWG's Institute 
  of Law, four members of the KWG (Otto Warburg, Robert Havemann, 
  Kurt Gottschaldt, and Hans Nachtsheim) contemplated both questions 
  of specific guilt and the scientific value of Verschuer's work 
  itself. "Their decision was severe: Not only was Verschuer's link   
  to Auschwitz established but he was judged to be a 'racist fanatic.' 
  Thus ended Verschuer's career at the KWIA." 23
 
  .
 
  "On 7 November 1946 Wolfson [U.S. Counsel for War Crimes] drew 
  on evidence provided by the psychologist Kurt Gottschaldt that 
  Verschuer had been ‘informed of the detailed setup as it 
  existed in Auschwitz.’ Not unreasonably, Wolfson recommended 
  that [Karin] Magnussen, a known Nazi activist, be arrested and 
  interrogated. Verschuer counter-attacked that the denunciations 
  derived from communists. [...] Wolfson persisted in his 
  accusations by placing Mengele at the head of a table of 
  Auschwitz officers in 12 February 1947. Attempts were made to 
  have the de-Nazification verdict revoked, resulting in a third 
  interrogation of Verschuer on 13 May 1947, when Verschuer 
  told of Mengele’s excellent relations with his patients in 
  Auschwitz. ... Verschuer counter-attacked  that Havemann’s 
  evidence against him was provided by the communist sympathizer, 
  Kurt Gottschaldt. ...
 
  .
 
  "Verschuer consistently pressed home the point that those 
  discrediting him were 'communist agents.'" 24
 
  .
 
  Ultimately Verschuer was judged to be a Nazi fellow 
  traveler (Mitlaufer) -  a relatively mild   
  categorization -- fined 600 Reichmark, and released from 
  custody. "He was free to continue his career, even if it 
  would not be in Berlin." 25
 
  .
 
  "Publicizing German medical atrocities could undermine 
  wholesale public confidence in clinical science." To   
  avoid the appearance that the entire medical community 
  could no longer be trusted, the Nuremberg Medical Trial   
  political appointees "... presented medical researchers 
  as having been 'perverted' by the manipulative control   
  of the SS and as poisoned by Nazism..." and instead that
  "the human experiments were so ill-conceived as not to be 
  worthy of the status of science..." 26
 
  .
 
  "[T]he authorities considered that further investigation of 
  hospitals and universities was undesirable, ... [because] if 
  undertaken on a large scale it might result in necessary 
  removal from German medicine of large number of highly 
  qualified men at a time when their services are most needed." 
  27
 
  .
 
  "On 19 September 1949 Heubner, and the KWG scientists Adolf 
  Butenandt, Max Hartmann, and Boris Rajewsky cleared Verschuer. 
  This Dahlem commission marked the reverse of the Doctors' Trial, 
  as it was a tribunal of peers (mostly tarnished by various 
  degrees of complicity under National Socialism). The commission 
  could easily reject that Verschuer was a racial fanatic, or that 
  he collaborated with the SS -- for science under National 
  Socialism did not necessarily work this way. It played down the 
  significance of the Mengele link by stressing that he was only a 
  camp doctor, who would have followed SS regulations against 
  spreading information about Auschwitz as an extermination camp." 
  28
 
  .
 
  Thus, the ties of the German medical community -- especially 
  those at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes -- were not in any way 
  associated with the death camps; therefore, medical science 
  and the scientists should really be acceptable to the German 
  public and the rest of the world. The SS, and medical 
  personnel such as Mengele who were directly involved with the 
  death camps, were fingered as the most responsible for the 
  atrocities of National Socialism. 29
 
  Later life
 
  In late 1945 or early 1946 Verschuer petitioned the mayor 
  of Frankfurt to allow him to reestablish the KWI-A. However 
  the commission in charge of rebuilding the Kaiser Wilhelm 
  Gesellschaft decreed that "Verschuer should be considered 
  not as a collaborator, but one of the most dangerous Nazi 
  activists of the Third Reich." The KWI-A was not reestablished.
 
  .
 
  In 1951, Verschuer was awarded the prestigious professorship 
  of human genetics at the University of Munster, where he 
  established one of the largest centers of genetics research 
  in West Germany. Like many "racial hygienists" of the Nazi 
  period, and many American eugenicists, Verschuer was successful 
  in redefining himself as a genetics researcher after the war, 
  aided by the German public's desire to dissociate itself from 
  the war's atrocities.
 
  .
 
  Verschuer had been accepted during the war as a member of 
  the American Eugenics Society, a position he kept until 
  his death. 
 
  .
 
  When Verschuer died in 1969 (in an automobile accident), 
  obituaries in German scientific journals made no mention 
  of his Nazi involvement.
 
 
  1  
   
     Twin research has been used as a substitute for genetic 
     research and, as such, has been associated with a great 
     deal of scientific fraud; see The "Cyril Burt Affair".
   
 
  .
 
  2  
   
        The paradigm constructed by twin research was distinguished 
        by a marked conceptual reductionism in four respects: First, 
        it presupposed genetic disposition and environment as analytical 
        categories without demarcating them precisely from each other. 
        Second, the paradigm of the twin method did not itemize the two 
        components of heredity and environment into any subordinate 
        components. The urgent interest [in Germany's Second and Third 
        Reichs] was not in the individual genes, their placement on the 
        chromosomes, or the mechanisms of their propagation, not the 
        reciprocal actions they exerted upon each other, and not the 
        complex connections between individual genes and phenotypical 
        characteristics (expressivity, penetrance, specificity) -- at 
        least not initially. Rather, the subject of interest was the 
        genome, and also the environment, conceived of as black boxes. 
        Third the paradigm of twin research proceeded from the assumption 
        that the two components of heredity and environment interacted 
        additively in the development of characteristics, and that 
        consequently it is possible to break down the process of 
        phenogenesis according to magnitudes of influence and determine 
        the respective importance of heredity and environment 
        quantitatively. The complete processes of interaction between 
        hereditary factors and environmental conditions, and the effects 
        of synergy and emergence that result from this interaction, are 
        ignored completely in this approach -- the question was not even 
        posed as to whether it makes sense at all to conceive of heredity 
        and environment as bundles of factors that can be clearly 
        differentiated, and effective in and of themselves. Fourth and 
        finally, the idea that the elements of the phenotype are dependent 
        variables, which ultimately can be traced back over a complex 
        causal chain to two independent variables, the genome and the 
        environment, resulted in an arbitrary definition of dependent and 
        independent variables used in twin research to address the highly 
        complex characteristics of human beings. In so doing it ran the 
        risk of superficially assigning a gene for -- be it for musical 
        talent, sensation of taste, moral instability, criminality, or 
        schizophrenia. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute 
        for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", The 
        Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 259, Wallstein 
        Verlag, 2003 , pp. 62
       
     
  .
     
        
        Christoph Mai proposed the thesis that there was a close 
        connection between the boom in twin research and the 
        strengthening of the race hygiene movement in the 1920's. 
        "Leading German human geneticists," according to Mai, "explicitly 
        determined the goals and practical application of their research 
        under the aspect of their eugenic-race hygiene -- i.e., 
        sociopolitical -- usability [...]. [...] [I]n short, Mai 
        characterizes twin research as a pseudoscience. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, 
        "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and 
        Eugenics, 1927-1945", The Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 
        Vol. 259, Wallstein Verlag, 2003 , pp. 62
       
     
  .
     
        
        A veneer of scientific methodology was used, employing Hermann 
        Werner Siemens' "polysymptomatic similarity diagnoses" (1923), 
        wherein multiple anthropometrically-measured phenotype factors 
        were considered proof of genotype similarity. Anthropometric 
        factors measured included hair color and shape, skin color, 
        color of lanugo (fetal hairs), freckles, telangiectasia, 
        cornification in hair follicles, tongue creases, characteristics 
        of the face, shape of the ear, form of the hand and body type, 
        to give the appearance of differentiating between heredity vs 
        environment. Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute 
        for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", The 
        Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 259, Wallstein 
        Verlag, 2003 , pp. 60, 61
       
     
   
 
  .
 
  3  
   
     Nicholas Wade, "IQ and Heredity: Suspicion of Fraud Beclouds 
     Classic Experiment", Science 26 November 1976: 916-919.
   
 
  .
 
  4  
   
     D. D. Dorfman, "The Cyril Burt Question: New Findings", 
     Science 29 September 1978: Vol. 201 no. 4362 pp. 1177-1186
   
 
  .
 
  5  
   
     Gretchen E. Schafft, "From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology 
     in the Third Reich", U. of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2004, p. 54
   
 
  .
 
  6  
   
     Simone Gigliotti, Berel Lang, "The Holocaust: a reader", 
     Wiley-Blackwell, 2005, p. 104
   
 
  .
 
  6  
   
        Karin Magnussen was researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm 
        Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics 
        during Germany's Third Reich, known for her 1936 
        publication "Race and Population Policy Tools", and her 
        studies of heterochromia iridis (different colored eyes) 
        using iris specimens from Auschwitz concentration camp 
        victims (supplied by her colleague, Joseph Mengele).
       
     
  .
     
        
        Karin Magnussen may have modeled herself after "...the biologist Agnes 
        Bluhm (worked at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Biologie) who wrote 
        Die rassenhygienischen Aufgaben des weiblichen Arztes, Berlin, 
        1934, who unhesitatingly supported Hitler's regime." However, there is
        no known connection between Karin Magnussen and Eva Justin who studied
        Roma and Sinti (Gypsie) foundlings at the "Rassenhygienische und 
        Bevölkerungsbiologische Forschungsstelle" (The Research Unit for 
        Racial Hygiene and Population Biology) at the University of Tübingen 
        before sending these children to Auschwitz for "special handling".
       
     
  .
     
        
         See Hans Hesse, "Augen aus Auschwitz", Klartext-Verlagsges, 
         1. Januar 2001, ISBN-10: 3898610098, ISBN-13: 978-3898610094
       
     
   
 
  .
 
  7  
   
      German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration 
      camp Auschwitz. He earned doctorates in anthropology from 
      Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University. 
      He initially gained notoriety for being one of the SS physicians 
      who supervised the selection of arriving transports of prisoners, 
      determining who was to be killed and who was to become a forced 
      laborer, but is far more infamous for performing grisly human 
      experiments on camp inmates, including children, for which 
      Mengele was called the "Angel of Death."
   
 
  .
 
  9  
   
    A display of von Verschauer in relation to Mengele 
    appeared during 2011 in the exhibit "Deadly Medicine: 
    Creating the Master Race" in the Museum of Texas Tech 
    University, Lubbock, Texas. Kerns, William (2011-02-21). 
    "Deadly medicine [photo of von Verschuer appears in the 
    print edition only 
    (http://lubbockonline.com/entertainment/2011-02-21/largeholocaust-exhibit-visits-texas-tech-museum) "]. 
    Lubbock Avalanche-Jourrnal: pp. B1, B4.
    http://lubbockonline.com/entertainment/2011-02-21/large-holocaust-exhibit-visits-texastech-museum. Retrieved 2011-02-25. 
   
 
  .
 
  10  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, p. 97
   
 
  .
 
  11  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, pp. 97, 98
   
 
  .
 
  12  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, p. 100
   
 
  .
 
  13  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, pp. 216-217
   
 
  .
 
  14  
   
     Gretchen E. Schafft, "From Racism to Genocide: 
     Anthropology in the Third Reich", U. of Illinois Press,      
     Urbana, 2004, p. 154
   
 
  .
 
  15  
   
     Benno Müller-Hill, "The Blood from Auschwitz and the
     Silence of the Scholars", Comprehensive Biochemistry, Volume 
     42, 2003, p. 510
   
 
  .
 
  16  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, p. 311
   
 
  .
 
  17  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, p. 220, note #441
   
 
  .
 
  18  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, p. 120
   
 
  .
 
  19  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, pp. 237, 239
   
 
  .
 
  20  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, p. 342
   
 
  .
 
  21  
   
     Hans-Walter Schmuhl, "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for 
     Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", 
     Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, 
     Wallstein Verlag, Gottingen, 2003, pp. 403, 406
   
 
  .
 
  22  
   
     Gretchen E. Schafft, "From Racism to Genocide: 
     Anthropology in the Third Reich", University of Illinois 
     Press, Urbana, 2004, p. 189 
   
 
  .
 
  23  
   
     Gretchen E. Schafft, "From Racism to Genocide: 
     Anthropology in the Third Reich", University of Illinois      
     Press, Urbana 2004, p. 189
   
 
  .
 
  24  
   
     Doris Kaufmann (Herausgegeben), 
     Geschichte Der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, 
     Wallstein verlag, 2000, p. 643
   
 
  .
 
  25  
   
     Gretchen E. Schafft, "From Racism to Genocide: 
     Anthropology in the Third Reich", U. of Illinois Press,      
     Urbana, 2004, p. 190
   
 
  .
 
  26  
   
     Doris Kaufmann (Herausgegeben), 
     Geschichte Der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, 
     Wallstein verlag, 2000, p.638
   
 
  .
 
  27  
   
     Doris Kaufmann (Herausgegeben), 
     Geschichte Der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, 
     Wallstein verlag, 2000, p.642
   
 
  .
 
  28  
   
     Doris Kaufmann (Herausgegeben), 
     Geschichte Der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, 
     Wallstein verlag, 2000, p.652
   
 
  .
 
  29  
   
     Most of the aforegoing interpretation was heavily facilitated by the 
     political demands of the emerging Cold War; see Doris Kaufmann (Herausgegeben), 
     Geschichte Der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, 
     Wallstein verlag, 2000, pp. 639-652.
   
 
 
  
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