In search of "Aryan blood" : serology in interwar and National Socialist Germany / Rachel E. Boaz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Boaz, Rachel E.

Series:

CEU Press studies in the history of medicine ; v. 4.

CEU Press studies in the history of medicine

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

National socialism and medicine--History.

National socialism and medicine.

Serology--Political aspects--Germany--History--20th century.

Serology.

Anthropology--Political aspects--Germany--History--20th century.

Anthropology.

Racism in medicine--Germany--History--20th century.

Racism in medicine.

Racism in anthropology--Germany--History--20th century.

Racism in anthropology.

Biopolitics--Germany--History--20th century.

Biopolitics.

Antisemitism--Germany--History--20th century.

Antisemitism.

Ethnic relations.

History.

Germany.

Germany--Politics and government--1918-1933.

Politics and government.

Germany--Politics and government--1933-1945.

Germany--Ethnic relations--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

245 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2011.

Summary:

This detailed study of an often-ignored component of racial science in interwar Europe is an invaluable addition to the burgeoning academic literature on the subject of interwar racial science and biopolitics.

Anthroposerology was one of many research avenues explored by racial scientists in anxiety-ridden post-WWI European societies. Its most enthusiastic practitioners did not resist the temptation to lean against dubious, "biased" science to prop up national self-esteem and nativist illusions, to foster ideas of racial-national superiority, and to legitimize the segregation/denigration of particular groups of racial "others."

That in this tainted pursuit they encountered logistical nightmares, perplexingly contradictory evidence, and widespread criticism even from their scientific peers is not surprising. What is, however, fascinating to discover in Boaz s book is that even the most virulent, völkisch Nazi discourses on blood owed very little to this research and epistemological paradigm. However discursively and politically invaluable the claimed connection between blood, race and heredity may have been to the Nazi regime, anthroposerology's dubious claim that blood types were racially significant was greeted with indifference in the 1930s-and was largely ignored in scientific terms, in spite of its continuing (and increasing) usefulness in propaganda terms.

But Boaz also uses the fascinating analysis of anthroposerological research as an opportunity to question much wider assumptions about racial science in interwar Europe-about (dis)continuities between Weimar-and Nazi-era racial science; about the Nazis' ambiguous and highly elastic use of racial research; about the reasons behind the popularity of certain, but by no means all, paradigms of racial research in Central and Eastern Europe; in the end about the validity of an entire "biopolitical" narrative that sees interwar racial science as the essential laboratory of the subsequent Nazi eliminationist projects. Book jacket.

Contents:

The Emergence of Blood Science

"Contagious Blood" in German Fiction and Early Blood Science

Origins of Serology

The Völkisch Notion of "Blood Defilement"

Seroanthropology

Jewish Physicians and Blood Science

Postwar Blood Science

Seroanthropology in the Early 1920S : Blood, Race, and Eugenics

Frigyes Verzár and Oszkár Weszeczky : Seroanthropological Research in Hungary

Surveying "Native Germans"

Blood Type and Genetic Inferiority

Völkisch Research

Organizing seroanthropology : the Establishment of the German Institute for Blood Group Research

Otto Reche and Racial Anthropology

The German Institute for Blood Group Research

Seroanthropology at its Height : Distinguishing Those with "Pure Blood"

Studies of "Native Germans"

Biased Research

The Jew as Examiner and Examined

Manoiloff's "Serochemistry" and Jewish Blood

Seroanthropological Analysis of Jews

Völkisch Propaganda

Jews and Seroanthropology

Blood as Metaphor and Science in the Nuremberg Race Laws

Seroanthropology in 1933

Proponents of Seroanthropology

Racial "Reform" under Nazism

"Blood Defilement"

Diverse Means of "Blood Defilement"

Seroanthropological Research in the Third Reich

The Pedagogy and Practice of Seroanthropology During World War II

Seroanthropology and National Socialist Medicine

Seroanthropological Research

Seroanthropology and Nazi Racial Ideology

Clinical Serology.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9789639776500

9639776505

OCLC:

754518548