Overview

Who was the scientific progenitor of eugenic thought? Amir Teicher challenges the preoccupation with Darwin's eugenic legacy by uncovering the extent to which Gregor Mendel's theory of heredity became crucial in the formation - and radicalization - of eugenic ideas. Through a compelling analysis of the entrenchment of genetic thinking in the social and political policies in Germany between 1900 and 1948, Teicher exposes how Mendelian heredity became saturated with cultural meaning, fed racial anxieties, reshaped the ideal of the purification of the German national body and ultimately defined eugenic programs. Drawing on scientific manuscripts and memoirs, bureaucratic correspondence, court records, school notebooks and Hitler's table talk as well as popular plays and films, Social Mendelism presents a new paradigm for understanding links between genetics and racism, and between biological and social thought.

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9781108499491

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Reviews

'Amir Teicher's wide-ranging and provocative history of Mendelism in the German-speaking world will bust the myth that it was Darwinian selectionism alone that provided scientific justifications for right-wing ideologies of racial purification.' Staffan Muller-Wille, University of Cambridge 'Amir Teicher's lucid study demonstrates that, similar to the way in which Darwin's work gave rise to Social Darwinism, the research method based on Gregor Mendel's experiments became transformed into a general interpretive framework - which Teicher calls 'Social Mendelism' - that exerted a powerful influence on the German biosciences in the first half of the twentieth century.' Richard F. Wetzell, German Historical Institute Washington 'Amir Teicher's wide-ranging and provocative history of Mendelism in the German-speaking world will bust the myth that it was Darwinian selectionism alone that provided scientific justifications for right-wing ideologies of racial purification.' Staffan Muller-Wille, University of Cambridge 'Amir Teicher's lucid study demonstrates that, similar to the way in which Darwin's work gave rise to Social Darwinism, the research method based on Gregor Mendel's experiments became transformed into a general interpretive framework - which Teicher calls 'Social Mendelism' - that exerted a powerful influence on the German biosciences in the first half of the twentieth century.' Richard F. Wetzell, German Historical Institute Washington

Author Information

Amir Teicher is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Tel-Aviv University.

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