Overview
From its founding in 1927 until its dissolution in 1945, the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics, and Eugenics (KWI-A) in Berlin-Dahlem transgressed many a boundary; indeed, the transgression of boundaries was in a sense its raison d’être from the outset. Initially this applied to the boundaries within the disciplinary canon of the human sciences. Even from its basic conception, the institute, centered around the person of its founding director Eugen Fischer (1874– 1967), was to unify anthropology, genetics, and eugenics under one roof. In ke- ing with the understanding predominant in Germany between the wars, anthropology went beyond the scope of the framework of the ascendant “race theory” to cover not only physical anthropology, including paleoanthropology, but also elements of what we today would call cultural and social anthropology. Thus, this anthropology extended far into the fields of archeology, paleontology, prehistory and early h- tory, history and sociology, and especially into ethnology and folklore. Human genetics, in turn, was more than the attempt to apply to humans the genetics dev- oped by Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945) and his school in the USA on the model of drosophila. In Germany, Morgan’s genetics, which concentrated on investigating the dissemination of genetic traits on the chromosomes and their morphological structure, was received with skepticism for two reasons.
Full Product Details
Author: Hans-Walter Schmuhl
Publisher: Springer
Imprint: Springer
Edition: Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 2008
Volume: 259
Dimensions:
Width: 15.50cm
, Height: 2.40cm
, Length: 23.50cm
Weight: 0.735kg
ISBN: 9789048176786
ISBN 10: 9048176786
Pages: 468
Publication Date: 19 November 2010
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Out of print, replaced by POD
We will order this item for you from a manufatured on demand supplier.
Reviews
From the reviews: Schmuhl demonstrates how carefully and completely Fischer's institute came to be integrated into the Nazi racial hygiene policies ... . Schmuhl and other historians have scrutinized carefully the basic research carried out at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology. ... this was both high-quality work by the standards of the day, and well-integrated into the racial hygiene policies of the regime. ... make significant contributions to a more subtle and deeper understanding of how science and Nazism interacted. --- (Mark Walker, Metascience, Vol. 19, 2010)
Das Buch auleistet nicht nur eine glanzende Analyse des KWI fur Anthropologie, die uber die bisherigen Kenntnisse hinausgeht. Es kommt auch in der Einschatzung und seinem Urteil hinsichtlich der Beteiligten auf eine uberzeugende und hochst differenzierte Charakterisierung. (Notker Hammerstein, Historische Zeitschrift 282 (2006)
From the reviews: Schmuhl demonstrates how carefully and completely Fischer,s institute came to be integrated into the Nazi racial hygiene policies ... . Schmuhl and other historians have scrutinized carefully the basic research carried out at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology. ... this was both high-quality work by the standards of the day, and well-integrated into the racial hygiene policies of the regime. ... make significant contributions to a more subtle and deeper understanding of how science and Nazism interacted. (Mark Walker, Metascience, Vol. 19, 2010)
