Wilhelm Schallmayer

Friedrich Wilhelm Schallmayer (February 10, 1857 – October 4, 1919) was Germany's first advocate of eugenics who, along with Alfred Ploetz, founded the German eugenics movement.[1][2] Schallmayer made a lasting impact on the eugenics movement.[3]

Wilhelm Schallmayer
Born
Friedrich Wilhelm Schallmayer

(1857-02-10)10 February 1857
Mindelheim, Kingdom of Bavaria
Died4 October 1919(1919-10-04) (aged 62)
Krailling, Bavaria, Germany
Alma materUniversity of Munich
Known forEugenics

Early life and academics

After graduation from secondary school in 1876, Schallmayer joined the army as a one-year volunteer. However, due to a "loss of fitness for military duty," caused by overexertion from a military exercise, Schallmayer was discharged from the military, and the potential of a military career ended for him.[4] Sheila Weiss wrote that his brief and unhappy experience in the army likely led to his life-long anti-militarism.[4]

Schallmayer was the first born of eleven children and was able to attend the university because his father owned a prosperous carriage and wagon business.[4] Prior to studying medicine, Schallmayer studied philosophy and the social sciences.[5] In 1881, Schallmayer enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine in Munich, and in 1883, he passed the state medical examination, becoming a licensed physician.[4] Schallmayer wrote his dissertation while completing his internship at the University of Munich's psychiatric clinic.[4] His dissertation outlined the pros and cons of force-feeding psychiatric patients and was titled The Rejection of Food and Other Disorders Regarding Food Intake by the Insane.[4] It concluded that "mental defectives" must be kept alive.[4] Schallmayer further specialized in urology and gynecology.[4]

Heredity and eugenics

In 1891, Schallmayer published his first book titled Über die drohende körperliche Entartung der Kulturmenschheit und die Verstaatlichung des ärztlichen Standes, translated Concerning the Imminent Physical Degeneration of Civilized Humanity and the Nationalization of the Medical Profession.[4] The book concluded that modern medicine impeded natural selection by aiding the survival and reproduction of those who are "defectively constituted" or "generally weak;" the increase in mental disorders was due to the inability to adapt to the fast-pace of modern industrial civilization; and degeneration has a high economic cost for caring for the insane.[4] Schallmayer also stated that war has a degenerate effect on the population because the fittest go to war and often die while the unfit, who cannot fight, stay at home and procreate.[4] Schallmayer argued that just as society rightfully invest in the education of children, it should also invest in the heredity of future generations.[4]

In 1900, Schallmayer participated in a literary competition and used the theories of August Weismann to support his ideas of human degeneration and to develop a philosophy of "generative ethics" or "subservience of the interest of the individual to that of the species."[4] Schallmayer's treatise also stated that the decline of Ancient Rome and Greece was due to the decline in marriages and raising children; in contrast, China had an old-age civilization based on strong kinship bonds and an aristocracy of talent rather than birth.[4] In 1903, Schallmayer received widespread recognition and review when his treatise, Vererbung und Auslese, won first place in the competition.[4] However, Schallmayer received criticism from social anthropologists because his treatise rejected Aryan race ideologies and the race theories of Arthur de Gobineau.[4] Schallmayer wrote that by Chinese standards, civilization was late to develop in Europe, and even by European standards, it was the Mediterranean civilizations that developed before the German civilizations; Schallmayer went as far to write that: "at the time of Tacitus and Caesar even the Iroquois were more culturally advanced than the Germans."[4] Schallmayer feared that linking eugenics with race theory would discredit and "guide the eugenics movement in a direction that lead nowhere or nowhere good."[4] Sheila Weiss wrote that Schallmayer believed race differences between races were less significant than genetic differences within the same race.[4]

Unlike Alfred Ploetz, Schallmayer did not believe in promoting the Nordic race above others.[6] The early German eugenics movement was ideologically divided along Schallmayer and Ploetz lines, but with the rise of Nazi Germany, Ploetz's views became national policy.[7] In 1939, Leonard Darwin wrote, in the Eugenics Review, that both Schallmayer and Ploetz are the pioneers of German eugenics, but it is up to Germany to decide who had the greater influence in bringing Germany in the right direction.[8]

Diane Paul wrote in the journal of Medical History, that finding out Schallmayer and some other important eugenicists were non-racist is an unexpected and important finding, but more research needs to be done to determine if their views represented Wilhelmine eugenics as a whole.[9] Weiss wrote that the motivation behind Wilhelmine eugenics was to boost national efficiency through the management of the reproductive capacities of the population.[10]

Political views

Schallmayer believed the state had the duty to protect and develop the biological capacity of its people.[11] He praised the Social Democratic Party for their support of science education and collective ownership but criticized the Marxist for their preoccupation and belief in economic equality for all.[4] Schallmayer believed that the political parties were driven by special interest, but eugenics was the philosophy that could unite the parties for a meaningful purpose.[4]

In a discussion with social democrat Oda Olberg, Olberg shared Schallmayer's view that population degeneration was a danger, but she believed that Schallmayer was one-sided and did not focus on the economic causes of degeneration.[12]

References
  1. Friedlander, Henry (2000). The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Univ of North Carolina Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0807846759. Although the German eugenics movement, led until the Weimar years by Alfred Ploetz and Wilhelm Schallmayer. . . .
  2. Rubenfeld, Sheldon; Benedict, Susan (2014). Human Subjects Research after the Holocaust. Springer. p. 13. ISBN 978-3319057019. In Germany the first initiatives came from outsider at the margins of the scientific community, including Dr. Alfred Ploetz and Dr. Wilhelm Schallmayer. who attempted to establish the new concept of racial hygiene, the German term for eugenics.
  3. Allen, Garland (January 5, 2004). "Was Nazi eugenics created in the US?". EMBO Reports. EMBO Press. 5 (5): 451–452. doi:10.1038/sj.embor.7400158. PMC 1299061. Wilhelm Schallmeyer, one of the early German eugenicists who left a lasting imprint on the movement.
  4. Weiss, Sheila (1987). Race Hygiene and National Efficiency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer. University of California Press. Wilhelm Schallmayer, co-founder of the German eugenics movement, was one of its most articulate spokesmen. He was also the first person to articulate the technocratic-managerial logic behind eugenic thought, presenting eugenics as a strategy for increasing Germany's national efficiency and cultural superiority through the rationale management of population.
  5. Amidon, Kevin (June 2008). "Sex on the brain: The rise and fall of German sexual science". Endeavour. Iowa State University. 32 (2): 64–69. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2008.04.004. PMID 18539331. S2CID 36080837. The two men who did the most to establish and propagate racial hygiene in Germany, Alfred Ploetz and Wilhelm Schallmayer (1857-1919), were both trained physicians who had explored philosophy, the social sciences and utopian social reform movements prior to completing their medical studies.
  6. Hendrick, Robyn (December 2005). "From Social Improvement to Scientific Racism: The Effects of World War I on the Definition of Racial Hygiene in Germany". University of Tennessee. Schallmayer believed, throughout his career, that the purpose of eugenics was to improve the fitness of German society among Germans, not to promote an alleged Nordic race above others, as racial hygienist Alfred Ploetz (1860-1940) argued later in life.
  7. "Genetics, Politics and Society" (PDF). University of Colorado. Eugenics in Germany bifurcated along the Ploetz versus Schallenmyer [sic] views about nationality. With the Nazi ascendance in 1933, Ploetz's view won the day.
  8. Darwin, Leonard (July 1939). "Friedrich Wilhelm Schallmeyer: 1857-1919 A pioneer in eugenics". The Eugenics Review. 31 (1): 33–4. PMC 2962339. PMID 21260337. Which of these two pioneers had greater influence in changing German thought in the right direction it is not for a non-German to attempt to decide. Schallmeyer was anyhow first in the field.
  9. Paul, Diane (January 1989). "Book Reviews". Medical History. 33 (1): 136–137. doi:10.1017/S0025727300049073. PMC 1035781. Weiss has convincingly demonstrated that some important eugenicists, such as Schallmayer and Alfred Grotjahn, were anti-racist. That is an unexpected and important finding. But this reader, at least, still needs to be convinced that the same can be said for Wilhelmine eugenics as a whole.
  10. Weiss, Sheila (March 1986). "Wilhelm Schallmayer and the Logic of German Eugenics". Isis. 77 (1): 33–46. doi:10.1086/354037. JSTOR 232500. PMID 3522479. S2CID 40074665. My own research into the history of Wilhelmine eugenics suggest that German eugenics can best be understood as a sometimes conscious, oftentimes unconscious strategy to boost national efficiency. . . .
  11. Hayes, Peter (April 1, 2015). How Was It Possible?: A Holocaust Reader. University of Nebraska Press. p. 23. ISBN 9780803274914. According to Schallmeyer the state had the duty to secure the biological capacity of its people.
  12. Albrecht, Gary (October 7, 2005). Encyclopedia of Disability. SAGE Publications. ISBN 9781452265209. In general, during the Weimar Republic moderate eugenic positions were more influential than radical ones. A dispute between the social democrat Oda Olberg and Wilhelm Schallmeyer throws light on the socialist eugenic approach. Oldberg shared Schallmeyer's opinion about the dangers of the population's degeneration, but she contradicted him in the causal analysis. For her, Schallmeyer was one-sided in primarily emphasizing genetic causes. Instead, Olberg saw the degeneration caused by the pauperization of the working class. Therefore, she pleaded for the improvement of the living conditions of the poor.
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