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 Magnussen7
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.