Fritz Lenz

<p>Fritz Lenz (1887-1976) was a German geneticists, and one of the most prominent and controversial eugenicists of the Weimar period (Weiss, 1990).</p>

<p>Lenz was a medical student at University of Freiburg from 1906-1912, where he became acquainted with August Weismann (1834-1914), Eugen Fischer (1874-1967), and Alfred Ploetz (1860-1940). Lenz viewed Ploetz as his mentor and adopted many of his ideas regarding human heredity and racial hygiene. In 1921, he co-authored a two-volume <em>Principles of Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene</em> with Eugen Fischer and Erwin Baur (1875-1933). This work became the most important German textbook on the topic of genetics and racial hygiene, and Lenz even caught the attention of the international eugenics community because of it. This publication also gave scientific legitimacy for many of the views and policies favoured in the Nazi period (Proctor, 1988; Weiss, 1990).</p>

<p>Lenz, like most European and American eugenicists, believed in the superiority of Caucasians. And like many racial hygienists in Germany, he was also an Aryan enthusiast, who used racial hygiene to promote the Nordic race. It must be noted, however, that there were German eugenicists, such as biologist Herman Muckermann (1877-1962), who opposed Nordic race hygiene. Both of these groups, including Lenz, believed that eugenics was a way to create a healthy and productive nation. They equated fitness with productivity, and unfitness with the inability to contribute to society. Lenz was more concerned about the decline of his own class (educated middle class individuals) than with the increase of the “unfit”. Prior to 1933 then, many German eugenicists, Lenz included, were preoccupied with class rather than race (Weiss, 1990).</p>

<p>Following the Nazi rise to power in 1933, there was a shift in welfare practice towards violence against "undesirables" (due to reasons of race or biology) (Weindling, 2010). For Lenz, this meant that many of his ideas about racial hygiene had now become state policy. He served on the Committee on Population and Racial Policy, which was responsible for introducing Germany’s sterilization legislation (Proctor, 1988). After 1945, Lenz continued to have a successful career in genetics in West Germany (Weindling, 2010).</p>

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<p>-Erna Kurbegovic </p>

<div>CITE THIS DOCUMENT (APA): Kurbegovic, E. (2013, September 14). Lenz, Fritz. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/tree/5233d05d5c2ec500000000b1 </div>

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<h3>References</h3>

<p class="small">Kater, M. (1989). <em>Doctors under Hitler</em>. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.</p>

<p class="small">Proctor, R. (1988). <em>Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis</em>. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.</p>

<p class="small">Weindling, P. (2010). German Eugenics and the Wider World: Beyond the Racial State. In A. Bashford, & P. Levine (Eds.), <em>The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics</em> (315-331). Oxford: Oxford University Press.</p>

<p class="small">Weiss, S. (1990). The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany. In M. B. Adams (Ed.), <em>The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia</em> (8-68)</p>

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Fritz Lenz

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