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Ernst Rudin

From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.

Ernst Rudin (April 19, 1874 - 1952) Swiss-German psychiatrist, geneticist and eugenicist. Rudin was born in St. Gallen, Switzerland. He is known as one of the fathers of racial hygiene.

Contents

1 Psychiatry, genetics, and racial hygiene

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Psychiatry, genetics, and racial hygiene

Influenced in racial hygiene and social Darwinism by his brother-in-law Alfred Ploetz, Rudin started his career as a psychiatrist and developed the concept of "empirical genetic prognosis" of mental disorders. He published his initial results on the genetics of schizophrenia in 1916.

Rudin was the director (1917-1945) of the Genealogical-Demographic Department at the German Institute for Psychiatric Research.

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Eugenics

Ernst Rudin was the director of the one of the first eugenics research institutes, known as Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy in Munich, Germany. He also headed the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt and the German Society for Rassenhygiene (Race-hygiene) and was one of the first members of the organization which attempted to educate the public on the "dangers" of heredity defectives and the value of of the Nordic race as "culture creators."

Rudin's work was endorsed by the German government's National Socialist Party(Nazi). The Nazi's recognized Rudin as one of the father's of the Nazi ideology.

In 1933, Ernst Rudin, Alfred Ploetz, and several other experts on racial hygiene were brought together to form the Expert Committee on Questions of Population and Racial Policy under Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. The committee's ideas were used as a scientific basis to justify the actions of the Nazi's racial policies.

Rudin wrote the official commentary for the Nazi racial policy "Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring" which the German government passed on January 1, 1934.

Rudin was supplied with manpower and financial support and special awards were given to him by the Nazis and Adolf Hitler.

Rudin quoted Hitler in a speech to the German Society for Rassenhygiene: "Whoever is not physically or mentally fit must not pass on his defects to his children. The state must take care that only the fit produce children. Conversely, it must be regarded as reprehensible to withhold healthy children from the state.[--Adolf Hitler]".

After 1945, Rudins connections to the Nazis were the main reason for criticism towards psychiatric genocide in Germany.

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Quotes

"The significance of Rassenhygiene did not become evident to all aware Germans until the political activity of Adolf Hitler and only through his work has our 30 year long dream of translating Rassen- hygiene into action finally become a reality."--Ernst Rudin

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References

"Aufgaben and Ziele der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene" Archiv Fur Rassen- und Gesellschafts- biologie 28 (1934): pp. 228-29
"The Science and Politics of Racial Research" by William Tucker. University of Illinois Press, 1994.
"Psychiatric research and science policy in Germany: the history of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Psychiatrie (German Institute for Psychiatric Research) in Munich from 1917 to 1945)" MM. Weber, 2000
"Program and practice of psychiatric genetics at the German Research Institute of Psychiatry under Ernst Rudin: on the relationship between science, politics and the concept of race before and after 1993" by V. Roelcke, 2002
"Racial Hygiene" by Robert Proctor.

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