Anti-Semitism as skill: Rudolf Virchow's Schulstatistik and the racial composition of Germany

Central European History

Volumn 32, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 409-429

  Zimmerman, Andrew ^a  

^a Columbia University ^*

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EID: 36348996000     PISSN: 00089389     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0008938900021762     Document Type: Review

References (64)

1. The only historian to recognize that Virchow believed the study proved Germany to be racially "Aryan" is Léon Poliakov. See Poliakov, The Aryan Myth: A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (London, 1974), 264-66
2. George L. Mosse also recognized the equivocal nature of this study, although he did not discuss Virchow's own conclusions about the German and Jewish races. See Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York, 1978), 90-93
3. Otherwise, historians have generally coordinated their presentation of the school survey with Virchow's well-known liberalism and opposition to anti-Semitism, and assumed that Virchow's study disproved the existence of German and Jewish "races."The earliest presentation of the study as a blow against racial notions of Germany is in Carl Posner, RudoIf Virchow (Vienna, 1921), 67
4. See also Erwin Heinz Ackerknecht, Rudolf Virchow: Doctor, Statesman, Anthropologist (Madison, 1953), 212-16
5. Woodruff D. Smith, Politics and the Sciences of Culture in Germany, 1840-1920 (New York, 1991), 103
6. Paul Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870-1945 (Cambridge, 1989), 48-49
7. The conventional account of Virchow's study is also presented in John M. Efron, Defenders of the Race:Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven, 1994)
8. Efron does an excellent job, however, of situating the study in a wider context of German discussions of Jewish racial separateness. Sander Gilman notes with Mosse that Virchow categorized Jews and Germans separately, although both Gilman and Mosse maintained the view that the study undermined the notion of a physically distinct Jewish race. See Gilman, "The Jewish Nose: Are Jews White? Or, The History of the Nose Job," in his The Jew's Body (New York, 1991), 169-93, here 177. While the present article contradicts Gilman's brief account of the school survey, it has been aided and inspired by Gilman's work
9. However, Virchow's opposition to anti-Semitism, as heroic and important as it was, should not be exaggerated. Werner Kümmel is, as far as I know, the only historian to deal with the subdeties of Virchow's relation to Jews.As Kümmel shows, Virchow's attitude was a fairly typical liberal one: Jews were in Germany to stay and were capable of being assimilated into mainstream German society. As Virchow declared to the Prussian House of Deputies on 21 March 1890: "The Jews are simply here.You cannot strike them dead." ("Die Juden sind einmal da. Sie können sie nicht totschlagen") This position did not tolerate cultural and religious difference between Jews and non-Jews, but rather advocated eliminating this difference. It was only after Adolf Stoecker began attacking him in the 1880s that Virchow came to be regarded as an unequivocal enemy of anti-Semitism. See Werner Kümmel, "Rudolf Virchow und der Antisemitismus," Medizinhistorisches Journal 3 (1968): 165-79
10. On Virchow's understanding of the permanence of race and species, see Virchow, Maischen-und Affenschädel (Berlin, 1870)
11. On Berlin anthropology, see my "Anthropology and the Place of Knowledge in Imperial Berlin" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998)
12. However, although opposition to Quatrefages's theory may indeed have added zeal to the work of pro-Prussian and anti-French anthropologists, the physical anthropology of the Germans was a project central to German anthropologists even before Quatrefages's attack, as the articles in the Archiv für Anthropologie (AA), from its founding in 1866, indicate. Furthermore, Virchow, to his own satisfaction at least, had already demolished Quatrefages' account on methodological grounds before he began his own study. See Virchow, "Über die Methode der wissenschaftlichen Anthropologic: Eine Antwort an Hrn. de Quatrefages," Zeitschrift für Etthologie (ZfE) 4 (1872): 300-20. When the study was finally completed, Virchow's reports mention only in passing that it disproved Quatrefages' hypothesis
13. For the turn of German physicians toward race and other social questions, see Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics
14. This was also the case in the study of non-European races. For example, when considering whether the people of the Sudan were more closely related to inhabitants of the Middle East than to inhabitants of sub-Saharan Africa, their skin color was intentionally disregarded. Although, Virchow pointed out, Sudanese skin color resembled that of sub-Saharan Africans, the shape of their head and face demonstrated they were really more related to inhabitants of the Middle East. See Verhandhmgen der Berliner Gesellchaft für Anthropologie, Etlmohgie und Urgeschichte (VBGAEU) 10 (1878): 333-55, 387-407. In no case that I am aware of did color or any other obvious feature take precedence over head and face shape in deciding racial questions
15. Robert Hartmann, "Untersucnungen über die Völkerschaften Nord-Ost-Afrikas," ZfE 1 (1869): 23-45; 135-58, here 33
16. Hermann Welcker, "Kraniologische MittheiIungen," AA 1 (1866): 89-160, here 93-94
17. The members of the commission in charge of the study were Alexander Ecker, Wilhelm His, Wilhelm Krause, Hermann Schaaffhausen, Albert Kölliker, Gustav Lucae, and Hermann Welcker, as well as Virchow. See anon., "Protocoll über die 1. Sitzung der 2. allgemeinen Versammlung der Deutschen Anthropologischen Gesellschaft zu Schweren, am 22. September 1871, im Saale des Schauspielhauses," Correspotidenz-Blatt der Deutschen Anthropologischen Gesellschaft (CBDAG) 2 (1871): 41-80, here 59
18. See also Virchow, report on the statistics of the skull form, in "Die Vierte Allgemeine Versammlung der Deutschen Anthropologischen Gesellschaft zu Wiesbaden," attached to CBDAG 4 (1873), 28-30
19. Virchow, "Berichterstattung über die statistischen Erhebungen bezüglich der Farbe der Augen, der Haare und der Haul," CBDAGH (1876): 91-102
20. Virchow, "Die Ziele und Mittel der modernen Anthropologic," CBDAG 8 (1877): 1-7
21. Die Sechste Allgemeine Versammlung der Deutschen Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in München, attached to CBDAG 6 (1875): 47-50
22. Virchow, report on the statistical study of skull form, "Die Vierte Allgemeine Versammlung der Deutschen Anthropologischen Gesellschaft zu Wiesbaden," 28-30
23. This was not the first time Jews had been excluded from statistical surveys. Hermann Hölder excluded Jewish and French subjects from his "Beiträge zur Ethnogröphie von Württemberg." Ian Hacking notes that in 1769 Prussia separated Jews from non-Jews in its statistical surveys, resulting in the General-Judentabellen and Provinzial-Judenfamilien-Listen. See Ian Hacking, TheTaming of Chance (Cambridge, 1990), 23
24. Of course the eighteenth-century Prussian statistics did not include surveys of racial characteristics. In the nineteenth century, Prussia ceased to count Jews separately in its censuses.The anti-Semitic petition presented to Bismarck in 1882 demanded a restoration of the special census for Jews, as well as the exclusion of Jews from public positions and the end of Jewish immigration. See Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (1964; London, 1988), 91
25. Michael B. Gross shows how liberal opponents of the Kulturkampf themselves associated anti-Catholicism with potential anti-Semitism. See Gross, "Kulturkampf and Unification: German Liberalism and the War against the Jesuits," Central European Historyw 30, no. 4 (1998): 545-66
26. The ability of states to order teachers to participate in this study was made possible by the 1872 School Supervision law, part of the Kulturkampf laws, which decreased church control of schooling and increased the state's influence' in education. See Marjorie Lamberti, State, Society and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (New York, 1989)
27. See, for example Alexander Ecker to Rudolf Virchow, 8 February 1876, in Christian Andree, Rudolf Virchow als Prähistoriker (Cologne, 1976), 2:83-84
28. and Adalbert Falk (Kultusminister) to the Berlin Anthropological Society, 10 August 1874 and 12 October 1874, printed in CDDAG 6 (1875): 32-36
29. Virchow, CBDAG 6 (1875): 2-3, here 3
30. Oscar Fraas, CBDAG 6 (1875): 36-37
31. VBGAEU 7 (1875): 90
32. See Georg von Mayr, Report on the school statistic in Munich, "Die Sechste Allgemeine Versammlung der Deutschen Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in München," 50-55
33. It was then cited in Alfred C. Haddon, History of Anthropology (London, 1910)
34. Finally it was cited in Ackerknecht, Rudolf Virchow, 213
35. Mosse is surely correct in observing that "the survey must have made Jewish children conscious of their minority status and their supposedly different origins." Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, 91
36. Jack Goody shows how lists organize thought, action, and objects and are thus a kind of cos-mological representation. See Goody, "What's in a List," in The Domestication of the Savge Mind (Cambridge, 1977), 74-111
37. Rudolf Virchow, "Berichterstattung," 101
38. See anon., "Cassenbericht," "Die Sechste Allgemeine Versammlung der Deutschen Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in München," 21-22
39. Hamburg never conducted the survey. As Mosse notes, the Hamburg government explained that the survey conflicted with ideas of personal liberty. (One Jewish school from Hamburg did complete the survey and sent it to Virchow.) See Rudolf Virchow, "Gesammtbericht über die von der deutschen anthropologischen Gesellschaft veranlassten Erhebungen über die Farbe der Haut, der Haare und der Augen der Schulkinder in Deutschland," AA 16 (1886): 275-475, here 283-84
40. See the tabulation for Altenburg, Saxony, in Virchow Papers, 2644
41. "... also ein recht respectabler Gegensatz gegen die wirklichen Germanen." Virchow, "Berichterstattung," 102
42. Rudolf Virchow, "Gesammtbericht über die Scatistik der Farbe der Augen, der Haare und der Haut der Schulkinder in Deutschland," CBDAG 16 (1885): 89-100, here 91
43. The third explanation had recendy been put forward in the Berlin Anthropology Society's journal and seems to have been the most commonly held among German anthropologists at the time the survey results were evaluated. See Richard Andree, "Rothe Haare," ZfE 10 (1878): 335-45
44. Virchow, "Gesammtbericht," CBDAG, 91
45. Virchow, "Gesammtbericht," AA, 368
46. Such newspaper reports survive the Virchow Papers. See for example, Nichtpolitische Zeitung (Munich), 13 August [probably 1874]
47. Victor Böhmert, "Die söchsische Erhebungen über die Farbe der Haut, der Haare und der Augen der schulpflichtigen Jugend (Aus dem statistischen Bureau des Köngl. Ministeriums des Innern)," Wissenschaftliche Beilage der Leipziger Zeitung, 23 November 1876, 581-85, Virchow Papers, 2644
48. I estimate that 81 percent of all children in Germany between the ages of 6 and 14 participated in the survey. I arrived at this figure using German census data from 1871 and 1880. Since the age group measured by anthropologists was 6-14, while the census included groups from 5-9 and 10-14, I took 1/5 from the 5-9 age group to reflect the absence of five-year-old children, because I assumed that there were an equal number of children of each age. I thus calculated as follows (figures are in thousands): {table presented} I then averaged the total population of 6-14 year-old children for 1871 and 1880 to estimate the number of children in this age group at the time of the study, in the mid-1870s, to arrive at the following estimated population of 6-14 year-old children in Germany during the time of the measurement: 8392. The number measured was 6759, or 81 percent of the relevant age group. This figure does not reflect the teachers also direcdy involved in the study and the parents indirectly involved. For the statistics, see B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics, 1750-1970 (London, 1975)
49. I do not mean to assert that the survey of German races itself caused German anti-Semitism. Indeed, studies of hair, eye, and skin color were conducted in Belgium, Switzerland, and German-speaking Austria before 1885, although there is no indication that these studies also excluded Jews or of how they were conducted. Virchow used the results of these studies to bolster his assertion of the peculiar blondness (and therefore whiteness) of the population of Germany. See Virchow, "Die Verbreitung des blonden und des brünetten Typus in Mitteleuropa," Sitzungsberichte Act Königlich Prcussischen Akademie der Wissenschafien zu Berlin 5 (1885): 39-47, here 39-40
50. On tacit knowledge, see Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge :Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago, 1958)
51. Gilbert Ryle, "Knowing How and Knowing That," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 46 (1945-46): 1-16
52. This is not to deny the importance of explicit ideologies, but rather to draw attention to what Oakeshott called "the liquid" in which "moral ideals were suspended." Michael Oakeshott, "Rationalism in Politics," in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (New York, 1962), 1-36, here 36
53. The classic studies of these "moral ideals" are Mosse, Toward the Final Solution, and Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (Berkeley, 1961)
54. Johannes Ranke, "Somatisch-anthropologische Beobachtungen," in Alfred Kirchhoff, Anleilung zur deutschen Landes-und Volksforsdung (Stuttgart, 1889), 329-80, here 332-39
55. Julius Kollmann, "Die Verbreitung des blonden und des brünetten Typus in Mitteleuropa," CBDAG 16 (1885): 33-35
56. While Nietzsche does not specify that "the more careful ethnographical maps of Germany" to which he refers are Virchow s, he does name Virchow in that passage.The contemporary anthropologist Otto Amnion also identified the maps to which Nietzsche referred as Virchow's (see n. 52, below). Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1:5
57. Otto Amnion, Die Gesellschafisordnung und ihre natürlichen Grundlagen: Entwurf einer SozialAnthropologie zum Gebrauch für alle Cebildeteu, die sich mit sozialen Fragen befassen (Jena, 1895), 173-74
58. Donald MacKenzie indicates the political importance of tacit knowledge in his study of nuclear missiles. Producing these missiles required not just engineering plans but also a repertoire of skills transmitted within local scientific communities. MacKenzie speculates that if communities cease to transmit these skills, nuclear missiles could be "uninvented." See Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (Cambridge, 1990)
59. Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons," American Journal of Sociology 101 (1995): 44-99. Perhaps Germans could have similarly uninvented racial anti-Semitism - and indeed, perhaps they have been doing so since 1945
60. The cataclysmic break historians of German anthropology have perceived between the supposedly antiracist anthropology of Virchow and others in the nineteenth century and the more racist anthropology of the twentieth century appears less clean when racism is viewed as a set of practices rather than an ideology. For accounts of twentieth-century German racist anthropology as a cataclysmic break from nineteenth-century anthropology see Robert Proctor, "From Anthropologie to Rassenkunde in the German Anthropological Tradition," in Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays on Biological Anthropology, ed. George W. Stocking (Madison, 1988), 138-79
61. 79-154
62. As Stephen Turner has written, "... we may manipulate experiences in ways that form habits - this is after all what education is - without understanding what habits we are producing and how they will later manifest themselves?'Stephen Turner, The Social Theory of Practices. Tradition, Tacit Knowledge, and Presuppositions (Chicago, 1994), 105
63. A mistakenly cognitive understanding of anti-Semitism, I believe, accounts for the flaws in the quite important questions posed in Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996)
64. Studies of practice and tacit knowledge will, I propose, allow historians better to answer questions about continuity and discontinuity in German history. Indeed, Christopher R. Browning, examining much of the same material Goldhagen did later, demonstrates the importance of understanding even Germany's genocidal anti-Semitism primarily in terms of practice rather than in terms of peculiar beliefs. See Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992)