Ernst Rüdin and Family Studies

Hahn, Patrick D.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21866-9_2

Patrick D. Hahn²

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Abstract

This chapter details the career of Ernst Rüdin, the Swiss-born psychiatrist (and former protégé of Bleuler). Rüdin was the first Director of Genealogical and Demographic Studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry and a tireless proponent of the compulsory sterilization of the “unfit.” This segues into a history of the Action T4 program for the mass murder of the mentally ill, which in turn served as the pilot program for the Holocaust.

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Notes

1.
Gundula Kösters et al., “Ernst Rüdin’s Unpublished 1922–1925 Study ‘Inheritance of Manic Depression Insanity’: Genetic Research Findings Subordinated to Eugenic Ideology,” PLoS Genetics, 11, no. 1 (November 6, 2015): https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1005524
2.
Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 96–97.
3.
Kösters et al., Ernst Rüdin’s “Unpublished Study.”
4.
Ibid.
5.
Ibid.
6.
Ibid.
7.
Ibid.
8.
Ibid.
9.
Ibid.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Matthias M. Weber, “Ernst Rüdin 1874–1952: A German Psychiatrist and Geneticist,” American Journal of Medical Genetics, 67, no. 4 (July 26, 1996): 327, https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1096-8628(19960726)67:4<323::AID-AJMG2>3.0.CO;2-N
12.
Proctor, Racial Hygiene; 40.
13.
Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 28.
14.
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 101.
15.
Ibid., 102–103.
16.
Müller-Hill, Murderous Science, 29.
17.
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 106.
18.
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 108; Müller-Hill, Murderous Science, 32.
19.
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 109.
20.
Ibid., 110.
21.
Müller-Hill, Murderous Science, 31.
22.
Ibid., 28–29.
23.
Ibid., 30.
24.
Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 62–66.
25.
Frederic Wertham, A Sign for Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence (New York: Paperback Library, 1966), 162.
26.
Wertham, Sign for Cain, 155–156; Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986): 67; Meyer, Joachim-Ernst, “The Fate of the Mentally Ill During the Third Reich,” Psychological Medicine, 18, 3 (August 1988): 575–576; Gallagher, By Trust Betrayed 70–71; Friedlander, Origins, 80–81; Michael Dudley and Fran Gale 2002, “Psychiatrists as a Moral Community? Psychiatry Under the Nazis and Its Contemporary Relevance,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 36, no. 5 (October 2002): 586, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-1614.2002.01072.x
27.
Gallagher, Betrayed, 70–71.
28.
Friedlander, Origins, 70–71.
29.
Lifton, Nazi Doctors, 82–83.
30.
Friedlander, Origins, 89.
31.
Ibid., 76–80.
32.
Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 189.
33.
Friedlander, Origins, 73.
34.
Gallagher, Betrayed, 11–12.
35.
Raymond Daniell, “Goering Accused Reds Baselessly: Admission on Reichstag Fire Charge Read Into Nuremberg Trial: Frisk Held Mass Killer: Former Refugee Links Him to ‘Mercy’ Deaths of Unfit Under Secret Law,” New York Times, January 17, 1946, 14.
36.
Gallagher, Betrayed, 13.
37.
Friedlander, Origins, 94.
38.
Ibid., 96.
39.
Ibid., 86.
40.
Gallagher, Betrayed, 14–15.
41.
Wertham, Sign for Cain, 167.
42.
Friedlander, Origins, 98.
43.
Ibid., 170–171.
44.
Ibid., 96.
45.
Ibid., 101–102.
46.
Ibid., 105–106.
47.
Ibid., 97–98.
48.
Ibid., 127.
49.
Friedlander, Origins, 109–110; Gallagher, Betrayed, 185.
50.
Gallagher, Betrayed, 185.
51.
Friedlander, Origins, 156.
52.
Gallagher, Betrayed, 128.
53.
Ibid., 128–129.
54.
Ibid., 131–136.
55.
Ibid., 135.
56.
Ibid., 127.
57.
Ibid., 127.
58.
“An Association With a Long Tradition,” German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics, accessed July 24, 2018, https://www.dgppn.de/en/the-dgppn/history.html
59.
Friedlander, Origins, 263.
60.
Ibid., 271–277.
61.
Ibid., 111.
62.
Ibid., 296–298.
63.
Wertham, Sign for Cain, 162.
64.
Ibid., 167.
65.
Friedlander, Origins, 155.
66.
Robert S. Wistricht, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (New York: Bonanza Books, 1982), 261.
67.
Müller-Hill, Murderous Science, 12–13.
68.
Weber, “Ernst Rüdin.” 329.
69.
Müller-Hill, Murderous Science, 61.
70.
Ibid., 121.
71.
Wertham, Sign for Cain, 157.

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Biology, Loyola University Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA
Patrick D. Hahn

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Hahn, P.D. (2019). Ernst Rüdin and Family Studies. In: Madness and Genetic Determinism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21866-9_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21866-9_2
Published: 12 July 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-21865-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-21866-9
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