Austrian and Czech neuroscience becomes “coordinated” under National Socialism

2020 ◽  
pp. 279-318
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Zeidman
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Racial Hygiene ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Neurology Clinic ◽  
The Law ◽  
Hereditary Conditions

The Austrian neuroscience consolidation came swiftly and terribly on “non-Aryans.” Austrian anti-Semitism was arguably even more virulent than in Germany. And laws had already escalated in Nazi Germany to the point that Jewish physicians at most could only treat other Jews as derogatorily called “sick treaters”; these laws were instantly applicable in “annexed” Austria, with no stepwise progressive disfranchisement. Even “Aryan” neurologists who were thought to be unsympathetic to the Nazi movement were dismissed shortly after the “annexation.” The Vienna university neurology clinic was taken over primarily by SS neurologists who had been “illegal” Nazis before the annexation and were extremely dedicated to the Nazi cause. At least one, Walther Birkmayer, spoke of expanding the sterilization law to other hereditary conditions not stipulated already by the law. At least nine racial or political neuroscientist replacements, including directors of institutes, led to racial hygiene consequences, including execution of sterilization and euthanasia programs.

La stérilisation hitlerienne Un testo inedito di Camillo Berneri

2009 ◽  
pp. 9-17
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Hereditary Diseases ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Law ◽  
Keywords Eugenics

- Camillo Berneri, an Italian anarchist, exiled in France during the fascist era, wrote in French this unpublished essay. This paper examines the law - passed in Nazi Germany in July 1933 - which made compulsory the sterilization of persons suffering from "hereditary diseases", such as psychiatric disorders. According to Berneri the roots of this law can be traced in the European (and American) debate on eugenic practices. Keywords: eugenics, sterilization, racism, national socialism, Camillo Bern

Once again, Erich Przywara and the Jews: A response to John Betz with a brief look into the Nazi correspondences on Przywara and Stimmen der Zeit

2014 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Silas Peterson
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
World History ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Analogy Of Being ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
University Of Notre Dame ◽  
The Right ◽  
Nazi Era

AbstractIn this article, I respond to John Betz (University of Notre Dame, USA) who has recently rejected claims that I have made about Erich Przywara’s anti- Semitism and his relationship to Nazi era ideology. Although I admire much of Przywara’s theology and have great sympathy for the teaching about the analogy of being, in this article I address some of the problems of Przywara’s work. I address literature from Przywara on the Jews where he talks about the essence of “the Jew” as “restless” and “revolutionary,” and where he brings up the “wandering Jew” theme or claims Judaism is an “insolent disturber” of the (German) “folkdom.” Przywara’s rejection of “Jewish messianism” and his claims about the “basic tension of the Jew” are also addressed. I analyze his conception of the essence of “the Jew” as, among other things, a “rising will of destruction” and his claim that “Christianity” ultimately becomes the “enemy” of Judaism. Beyond these things, Przywara’s desire to “overcome” Judaism with the right “weapons” is addressed. I also draw attention to his rejection of “Jewish capitalism” and his justification of “the hatred towards the Jews in world history.” In addition to this, his use of ideologically charged Nazi terminology, such as “host-peoples,” and his support of Catholic integralism in Nazi Germany are addressed. Furthermore, Przywara’s remarks (to a leading Nazi representative and ideologue, Hanns Johst) on “the positive sense” of the German “movements” (i. e. National Socialism) in the 1930s are presented. I also show that Przywara”s work was praised by a leading representative and ideologue of National Socialism (Otto Dietrich). With this, I address the internal Nazi correspondences on the very influential German Catholic Jesuit journal titled Stimmen der Zeit

The Return of the New Woman and Other Subjects of Weimar Gender History

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
MARTI LYBECK
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Gender History ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Femininity And Masculinity ◽  
The New Woman

After a drought of more than a decade, a substantial group of recent works has begun revisiting Weimar gender history. The fields of Weimar and Nazi gender history have been closely linked since the field was defined thirty years ago by the appearance of the anthologyWhen Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Following a flurry of pioneering work in the 1980s and early 1990s, few new monographs were dedicated to investigating the questions posed in that formative moment of gender history. Kathleen Canning, the current main commentator on Weimar gender historiography, in an essay first published shortly before the works under review, found that up to that point the ‘gender scholarship on the high-stakes histories of Weimar and Nazi Germany has not fundamentally challenged categories or temporalities’. Weimar gender, meanwhile, has been intensively analysed in the fields of cultural, film, and literary studies. The six books discussed in this essay reverse these trends, picking up on the central question of how gender contributed to the end of the Weimar Republic and the rise to power of National Socialism. In addition, four of the books concentrate solely on reconstructing the dynamics of gender relations during the Weimar period itself in their discussions of prostitution, abortion and representations of femininity and masculinity. Is emerging gender scholarship now shaping larger questions of German early twentieth-century history? How are new scholars revising our view of the role of gender in this tumultuous time?

scholarly journals Commentary: Masculinity and the Racial State

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-522
Author(s):  
Christopher Dillon
Keyword(s):  
Gender Relations ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Relationship

In their 1991 monograph on Nazi Germany,The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann asked why it was “acceptable to use anthropological categories in the case of youth or women, and apparently unacceptable to employ them in the case of men?” The expansive historiography of Nazism, they complained, offered nothing “beyond an isolated venture into the realm of male fantasies, or a few studies of homosexuals.” The answer, in fact, had a lot more to do with scholarly motivation than acceptability. Put starkly, there was no intellectualfrissonin recovering the history of “men” as a social category in Nazi Germany. Influential asThe Racial Stateproved to be in driving the research agenda for historians of National Socialism, the authors’ ensuing chapter, “Men in the Third Reich,” merely confirmed as much. It presented a dry, empirical overview of Nazi racial and economic policies, excised of those specifically directed at women and children. The termsgender,masculine, ormasculinitydo not appear once in thirty-six dense pages of text. To be sure, this reflected the wider state of knowledge in the academy. Now, almost three decades later, historians can draw on a sociology of gender relations that was still in its infancy when Burleigh and Wippermann were writing. They study “men” to decode historical configurations of power. They no longer conceive of women, children, and men as discrete actor groups, but as protagonists in systems of gender relations. A sophisticated interdisciplinary literature has rendered men legible as gendered subjects, rather than as an unmarked norm. This scholarship stresses the plurality of masculine identities. It advises that a racial state, like all known states, will be a patriarchal institution, and that the gendering of oppressed ethnic minorities plays a key role in the construction of majority femininities and masculinities. By pondering the relationship between racial and social identities in Nazi Germany, Burleigh and Wippermann nevertheless raised questions with which historians continue to grapple. Each of the contributors to this special issue ofCentral European Historyfocuses productively on the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and power in the “racial state.”

1. Hitler myths

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Jane Caplan
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Dimensions ◽  
The Relationship

‘Hitler myths’ introduces the history of National Socialism through three myths or images encapsulating different dimensions of the power attached to Hitler and his regime: the claims that Hitler had survived long after 1945; the image of a monolithic, all-powerful totalitarian regime commanding mass obedience; and the power of Germans’ belief in ‘the Führer’ to reconcile them to Nazi dictatorship. Each offers a key to the history of Nazi Germany: the nature of power and leadership; the relationship between ideology, consent, and terror; and the climax of war and genocide.

Erasmus and the Law

2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-236
Author(s):  
Laurens Winkel
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Law ◽  
Similar Vein

Erasmus is generally regarded as a model of tolerance and equanimity. As such, he very well could have an educational part to play in the ideology of equality and the non-discriminatory principle of our modern rule of law as embedded in Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution since 1983 which claims equality for all people on the Dutch territory. On the face of it, it would certainly seem worthwhile to examine whether Erasmus influenced the law of his age and might therefore also be relevant to views on the law of our present age. A closer look at this idealised view of Erasmus shows, however, that some qualifications are in order. It was not very long ago that some valid accusations of anti-Semitism were made against him: anti-Semitic statements were found in some of his letters. It should be noted that he is no exception in this: Luther, his contemporary, is also known to have made statements in a similar vein.

scholarly journals Neither Hitler nor Quisling: The Ragnarok Circle and Oppositional National Socialism in Norway

Fascism ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-133
Author(s):  
Terje Emberland
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Active Resistance ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Winter War

From 1935 to 1945, Ragnarok was the most radical national socialist publication in Norway. The Ragnarok Circle regarded themselves as representatives of a genuine National Socialism, deeply rooted in Norwegian soil and intrinsically connected to specific virtues inherent in the ancient Norse race. This combination of Germanic racialism, neo-paganism, and the cult of the ‘Norwegian tribe’, led them to criticize not only all half-hearted imitators of National Socialism within Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling, but also Hitler’s Germany when its politics were deemed to be in violation of National Socialist principles. In Germany they sought ideological allies within the Deutsche Glaubensbewegung before the war, and the ss during the war. But their peculiar version of National Socialism eventually led to open conflict with Nazi Germany, first during the Finnish Winter War and then in 1943, when several members of the Ragnarok Circle planned active resistance to Quisling and the German occupation regime.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document