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Author : Von Verschuer Otmar Freiherr
Title : Racial biology of the jews
Year : 1938

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The following article was taken from Volume III (1938) of the very important series, Forschungen zur Judenfrage (Studies on the Jewish Problem), the first six volumes of which were published by the Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt in Hamburg during 1937 to 1941. The nearly fifty articles in these six volumes represent the thinking on the Jewish question by some of the best German minds of that time. The authors of the articles were specialists, in some cases internationally known specialists, in a variety of fields, including anthropology, demography, genealogy, genetics, history, law, literary scholarship, musicology, philosophy and theology. The earlier articles in the series were given as lectures before meetings of the Reichsinstitut fur die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, Forschungsabteilung Judenfrage (National Institute for the History of the New Germany, Research Division for the Jewish Problem). It is not at all difficult to imagine that the research efforts which went into these articles cost the erstwhile German government hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Reichsmark. Although the research was subsidized by the National Socialist government, the tone of the articles is by no means generally and uniformly hostile to Jews. Baron von Verschuer's article, for example, is nearly free of value judgments and it concedes in a number of passages that Jews have special strengths characteristic of their race. By 1936 a number of circumstances had converged which made possible the publishing of this large body of research by non-Jews on the Jewish question. Such a constellation is highly unlikely ever to appear in the sky again, certainly not in our lifetime, and that is a fact which in itself gives these volumes a unique position and value in the serious study of the Jewish question. One circumstance was the importance which the German government attached at that time to the Jewish question and its willingness to allocate considerable economic resources to the study of the question in an attempt to find a constructive solution to it. This circumstance was combined with the willingness and ability of German scientists and scholars to come to grips with the Jewish problem as far as their areas of expertise were concerned. Perhaps most important, however, was the circumstance that there were individuals who had the vision and ability to organize such efforts. Especially noteworthy was Dr. Karl Alexander von Muller (1882-1964), who was a history professor at the University of Munich from 1917 to 1945 and who also became President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. Not only did he publish a number of notable books between 1923 and 1949, but he also published the Historische Zeitschrift during the years 1933-1945. His student, Walter Frank (1905-1945), became President of the above-mentioned Reichsinstitut fur die Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands. We encounter Frank's vivid and interesting exposition of the objectives of the Forschungsabteilung at the beginning of the first volume of the series. One need only read Frank's sixteen-page address to understand the attitude toward the Jewish problem held by many middle class Europeans in its historical perspective. It would be difficult to imagine that the present generation of effete, career-oriented, intimidated American academic types could ever produce a series similar to the Forschungen zur Judenfrage. The American academic establishment has been far too seriously corrupted by funds from Washington and Jewish donors. Fortunately, not all American scholars kowtow. There are individual Americans in academic life who have shown the courage, vision, ability and integrity necessary to challenge some of the historical and anthropological myths which have been used with cynically evil calculation to manipulate American public opinion. Such scholars have been harassed and in some cases even dismissed from their hard-earned positions which required many years of professional preparation. Even the most philo-Semitic of readers will have to concede the historical value, if nothing else, of the Forschungen zur Judenfrage because they throw penetrating light on the European attitudes toward Jews during the 1920s and 1930s and how they came about. Many Jews, but not all of them, would have us believe that they were just the convenient victims of a scapegoat mentality, prevalent especially in the defeated nations of Europe after 1918. However, this is a grossly oversimplified, self-seeing explanation that disregards a number of strong historical forces, such as the great and justifiable fear which the European middle classes had of the barbarically cruel Communist government which had been installed over the former Russian Empire and which was correctly sensed as an essentially Jewish government. As a result of the energetic book burning and intellectual intimidation on the part of officials of the powers which occupied Germany beginning in 1945 after the tragic, unnecessary and fratricidal Second World War, these volumes are especially scarce. The number of known copies in the United States could very well be less than a dozen. I have learned that they are in strong demand and are being sold at high prices in the German book trade. The first article I have chosen for translation is certainly one of the most important in the series and perhaps one of the most interesting ones for the American reader concerned with the Jewish question. It deals with genetically determined characteristics which, in their totality; differentiate Jews from other races. Many Jews, but by no means all of them, have energetically sought to deny that such genetically determined differences exist, or at least they have sought to deny to non-Jews the existence of such differences, even if they themselves are consciously or subconsciously aware of them. Here we need only think of Franz Boas (1858-1942) and his all too influential school of anthropology. (See The Liberty Bell, June, 1983, pp. 1-5.) The author of this incisive article, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (1896-1969), had a distinguished career in the study of human genetics. From 1927 to 1935 he was a division chief of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics in Berlin and during 1942 to 1945 he was its director. He published studies of tuberculosis in twins in 1933. His Eugenik was published in 1966. Baron von Verschuer also held professorial posts in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Munster. The second edition of his layman's manual on hereditary diseases and eugenic measures, Leitfaden der Rassenhygiene, was published in 1944. When reading von Verschuer's Rassenbiologie der Juden we must bear in mind that it was written nearly a half century ago. I have not chosen to modernize his vocabulary or use such fashionable euphemisms as "mental retardation" for "feeblemindedness" (Schwachsinn). Lest it be thought that von Verschuer was simply summarizing his own subjective observations or was exclusively dependent on materials published after 1933, we need only note that nearly all of the literature cited in the valuable bibliography at the end of the article originated before 1933 and that many of its authors would seem to be Jewish. Since the center of gravity of the Jewish problem has passed from Europe to North America, especially during the course of the twentieth century, it is now high time that some of the best non-Jewish research ever done on the Jewish problem be made available to English-speaking readers. Even just the titles and the names of the authors make exciting reading for those who wish to acquire a deeper knowledge of the roots of one of the gravest and most pressing of American national problems. In order to convey a hint of the breadth and depth of the articles in the Forschungen zur Judenfrage, we shall list the original titles and their English equivalents after the conclusion of the article by Baron von Verschuer. Finally let me recommend to Jews themselves that they read and reflect on the Forschungen zur Judenfrage, for these studies contain many astute observations and much valuable historical information as seen through the eyes of outstanding non-Jewish scholars. The Jews' persistence in blind hatred of their host populations, their insensitivity to or even total disregard of the sufferings of their victims, their ruthless use of the media which they now largely control, their insidious but shortsighted attempts to destroy the mores of their host populations, their disregard of the lessons of history and their arrogant presumption of their own moral superiority can only render impossible a constructive, nonviolent solution to the Jewish Problem. ...