The Creation of Adam and the Biblical Origins of Race in The Slave’s Friend (1836–1838)

The creation of Adam out of dust is a familiar tradition from the Book of Genesis. In abolitionist literature of the nineteenth century, this biblical narrative became the basis for a theory about the origins of race, arguing that because Adam was formed from red clay, neither he nor his descendants were white. This interpretation of Genesis underscored the value of non-white ancestors both in the biblical narrative and in human history and undermined popular theological arguments that upheld color-based racial hierarchies that privileged whiteness in the United States. This article examines the creation of Adam in Genesis 2 and its use in racial theory and abolitionist rhetoric, focusing on the children’s anti-slavery periodical The Slave’s Friend, published from 1836 to 1838.

EUGENICS BETWEEN SCIENCE AND POLITICS IN LATVIA DURING WORLD WAR II: THE INVESTIGATION FILE OF THE MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY OF THE LATVIAN SSR IN THE CASE OF THEODOR UPNERS

This study, based on the materials of the 1948 investigation of the Ministry of State Security of the Latvian SSR, traces and analyzes the scientific and administrative activities of Theodor Upners (1898-1992) during the Nazi occupation regime in Latvia. From 1942 until the end of the occupation in 1944, Upners was formally the leading eugenics specialist in Latvia. During this time, in 1942 he visited Germany on a scientific trip, gave a course on eugenics at the University of Riga, and in 1943 published the book «The Role of Eugenics in the Life of the Nation and the State». In the 1948 investigation, he was accused of collaborating with the Nazi occupation authorities and glorifying Nazi racial theory. The materials of the investigation indicate that the Upners’ Case was, at least in part, an episode of the repressions towards genetic that began in the Soviet Union. Upners acknowledged his collaboration with the Nazi occupation authorities, but denied – and this is confirmed by his published work – the glorification of racial theory and any calls for racial hygiene. Upners continued to fight to have these charges dropped until his rehabilitation in 1990. In this study, analyzing Upners’ activities during the Nazi occupation in the range between collaboration and resistance, against the background of his story, it is argued that the ideas of Nazi racial hygiene did not find support and adherents among Latvian academic scientists, and the rare public speeches about racial superiority were a tribute to political interests of the occupation regime.

Was Saint Bishop Nicholai a Fascist? A Review of His Addresses from March 1935 to April 1941

The author addresses the issue of Nicholai Velimirovich’s attitude towards fascism, responding to the criticism of Bishop Nicholai as a sympathizer of Adolph Hitler’s policy and the interpretation of Velimirovich’s thoughts that enabled such constructions. In the present article, special attention is paid to the public addresses of Nicholai Velimirovich during the period of the rise of the Nazi state, i.e. from 1935 to 1941. The main topic of this article is to deconstruct the great myth of Bishop Nicholai’s critics, which reads: Saint Bishop Nicholai is a fascist because he received a decoration from Hitler in 1934, and in 1935 he gave a lecture at Kolarac called “Nationalism of Saint Sava” where he praised Hitler as few people did during the life of the Reich leader, comparing him with Saint Sava, “whereby Hitler turned out to be bigger than Saint Sava.” This accusation comes from the critics of Bishop Nicholai from Peščanik, whose pamphlets are adopted and passed on by a part of the Serbian intelligentsia in which there are historians, linguists, political scientists, and even theologians. However, such constructions are possible only if we ignore the legacy of Bishop Nicholai and his thought. For instance, it is interesting that in the same year, namely in 1926, Hitler and Velimirovich published two completely opposite works — Hitler the second part of his Mein Kampf in which he revealed his racial theory to the world, and Nicholai a short article entitled “The Problem of Races,” in which he explained that the problem of race can not solve anthropologists, nor historians and psychologists, but only Christianity, urging Serbian youth not to make a value difference between races, but to consider whether a black earthen pot with honey or a white porcelain pot with vinegar is better. In his later works, there are much more references to the issues of racism, nationalism, chauvinism, etc., where he clearly holds moderated and balanced Christian worldview.

Jewish Medical Activity in the Ghettos under the Nazi Regime

This chapter discusses the research on Jewish medicine in the ghettos and camps that began during the Holocaust and was initiated by Jewish physicians and scientists who suffered alongside their fellow Jews under the Nazi regime. It looks at the documents of Jewish physicians on morbidity and mortality and the medical services that were established during that time. It also describes the main characteristics of Jewish medical activity during the Holocaust which have emerged from the studies published to date. The chapter explains the phenomenon of Jewish medicine in a broad historical context as it is shown to be unique compared with other cases of genocide. It cites the development of theories of eugenics, their inclusion in the conceptualization of racial theory, and its implementation under the Nazi regime as Nazi medicine.

The Religious and Quasi-Religious Genealogy of the Theology of Nazism

The article is dedicated to the understanding of the Nazi anthropology as an element of the quasi-religious concept. Adolf Hitler’s racial theory unequivocally rejected the human status of persons not belonging to the Caucasian race, labeling them as Untermensch (“under-man”). Such an attitude was due to several prerequisites. However, the core reason is manifested not in the rational sphere. In the twentieth century, concepts of quasi-religions and political religions became widespread due to the reign of two totalitarian ideologies in Eurasia—Nazism and Communism. Numerous scholars emphasized the fact that these ideologies performed religious functions thus occupying an intellectual space at the interface between the religious and the secular. Quasi-religion adherents may be equally fanatic as religious radicals. Questions about whether this similarity is mere coincidence or whether quasi-religions are derivatives from traditional religions and the meaning of this problem today deserve close attention.

The Racialization of the Jewish Question

This article explores how the Jewish Question went from being a question of whether to give Jews, as a religious minority, citizenship, to a racial theory of a conflict between the Aryan and Semitic races. It explores the origins of Christian anti-Judaism in Europe and describes how it flared up during the Crusades, Inquisition, and Pogroms. It then describes how and explains why the Jewish Question became pseudo-secularized into a pseudo-scientific racial anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Final Solution.

“Grandfather in the Bones”

Evangelical Anglicans of the Church Missionary Society constructed a triumphal narrative on the growth of the Ugandan Church circa 1900–1920. This narrative developed from racial theory, the Hamitic hypothesis, and colonial conquest in its admiration of Ugandans. When faced with closing the mission due to its success, the missionaries shifted to scientific racist language to describe Ugandans and protect the mission. Most scholarship on missionaries argues that they eschewed scientific racism due to their commitment to spiritual equality. This episode reveals the complex ways the missionaries wove together racial and theological ideas to justify missions and the particularity of Uganda.

Indirection and the Rhetoric of Tyranny: Carl Schmitt's The Tyranny of Values 1960–1967

This article situates Carl Schmitt's The Tyranny of Values (1960/1967/1979) within the context of Schmitt's 1940s and 1950s op-ed campaign for full amnesty for Nazi war criminals as well as the context of the Veit Harlan trials and the 1958 Lüth judgment of the German Constitutional Court. The article further examines the revisions to Schmitt's 1967 version of the text in the light of Karl Löwith's criticisms of Schmitt in an article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 1964. The article argues that The Tyranny of Values is a work of post-Second World War Nazi apologetics, in which Nazi racial theory can be seen being put to polemical ends in the 1960s and 1970s. The article concludes with broader reflections on the relation of Schmitt's The Tyranny of Values to Nazi discourse in the aftermath of the Second World War and the history of Nazism post-1945.