Picture
Caption: Determining Perfection: Methods and Ideologies Surrounding Racial Hygiene
Picture
Caption: Social Darwinism was the dominating school of thought in the 1800’s and early 1900’s when it came to racial hierarchy. Transferring Darwin’s rules of survival of the fittest from the animal kingdom to the human world was what many scientists used to determine what would be evolutionarily “healthiest” for the human population.
“The Development of the Skull and Facial Expression,” Peter Camper, Dissertation sur les Variétés Naturelles, Paris 1791
Picture
Caption: Moreover, the facial features of the subjects drawn are dramaticized and highly inaccurate. Yet, visual tables like this were used to dehumanize different ethnic populations.
The Races of Men, Robert Knox, London 1862
Diagrams from 1862, comparing the facial structures of a black man, european, and an orangutan. Much like any other pseudoscience, the method of measuring racial superiority based on facial angles was not sufficient enough to declare any sort of conclusions about this topic.
Picture
Caption: A young boy getting his nose measured by a physician. Due to the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, and later the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, tests had to be conducted to gauge if civilians fit the criteria of the Aryan race. What was known as “racial hygiene” was a core concept in Nazi ideals, and facial features aided in determining who was biologically “inferior.”
“100 Jahre Deutscher Rassismus (100 Years of German Racism)
Picture
Caption: Antisemitic poster used to warn people of the threat of mixing races. The poster was published by the Nazi Regieme (hence the swastikas in the upper corners) and the audience was people of Aryan decent. You can determine the audience due to the fashion that the two characters are drawn; while a stoic, beautiful woman looks forward, an unattractive and dramaticized Jewish man (who wears a malicious smirk) is used to make the audience draw bold conclusions about how the population of “Deutschland” (Germany) could appear if these two bloods mixed.
Circa. 1920
Picture
Caption: “Krankheitserreger” translates to “pathogen.” This picture is used to aid assumptions about various political, religious, and ethinic identities. They include communists, jews, gypsies (▼) and potentially even democrats ($). Much like germs, the symbols are displayed in a petri-dish, and are hard to spot. Therefore, this poster is used to make people unconsciously think about how these tainted beliefs will accumulate like a disease, and it initiates the conversation of racial sterilization.
Picture
Caption: Propaganda was also used to discourage people who were deemed as “deformed” from having children. The belief was that the poor and disabled actually had more children-which would ultimately overrun the “pure” and “strong” population of Aryans.
Diagram from the Journal or Hereditary Selection and Genetics, Vol. 1, 1926
Picture
Caption: The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring was passed in 1933. Its purpose was to force the sterilization of people who suffered from cognitive and physical disabilities. Two goals would be achieved by this: 1) to keep the population from paying taxes toward the care of these individuals and 2) to ultimately “purify” the gene pool. This propaganda states: Sterilization: “Not Punishment—Liberation / Which parents would like to rid their children of something so embarrassing?”
Exhibition Picture of the Race Political Office, People and Race, 1936
Picture
Caption: People who were set up to be euthanized were told that they were going to get further treatment for their ailments. Once the patients were loaded up in giant vans, the organizers would bring them to euthinasia centers, where they would be killed by gas, lethal injection, and starvation. They would then be burnt in mass numbers, and the public complained about the smell and the smoke. These centers were later moved out of “courtesy” to the public.
Limburg, 1941
Picture
Caption: The Aryan race was glorified across Nazi-occupied territory. The use of stereotypically beautiful people was used to boost the opinions of the favored public into supporting Nazi ideals.
Picture
Caption: The euthinasia program was shut down in 1941 when the Bishop of Münster publicly condemned it in his sermons. This fueled open protests revolving around the subjects, and ultimately deteriorated the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring. These killings still occurred afterwards regardless of the ban.