Hans F. K. Günther
A brief racial history of the German people
I N H A L T
Foreword .................................................................................................................................................................2
1. The concept of race. The races of Europe .....................................................................................................3
2. The physical characteristics of the European breeds ...................................................................................9
3. Impact of non-European races within German-speaking populations ......................................................32
4. The mental characteristics of the European breeds....................................................................................39
5. A few things about inheritance phenomena..................................................................................................45
6. The distribution of races across the German-speaking area.....................................................................51
7. The races of Europe in prehistory and history.............................................................................................65
8. Racial history of the German people.............................................................................................................73
9. The Nordic Idea................................................................................................................................................83
2
Foreword
Foreword to the 3rd edition
As the layout of this booklet has proved to be appropriate, only a few minor changes
have been made for the 3rd edition, 12th-18th thousand, with the exception of a few
passages on pp. 103-105 and pp. 119-120, where the description of certain prehistoric
movements of peoples has been clarified.
Jena, March 1933
Hans F. K.
Günther
Foreword to the 2nd edition
For the 2nd edition, the entire wording has been reviewed and changed in some places.
Some changes have been made to the illustrations. On the whole, the booklet has
remained unchanged, especially as its basic views and layout are once again in line with
the recently published 14th edition of "Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes".
Kappel near Lenzkirch, bad. Black Forest, August 1930.
Foreword to the 3rd edition
For some years now, the publisher and I have repeatedly b e e n asked whether it would not
be possible to publish an abridged version of the racial relations of the German-speaking
area, since wider circles are now paying so much attention to racial research, but at the
same time circles that do not h a v e so much free time to read the several hundred
pages of the
"Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes", but on the other hand I did not have the money to
buy books in a slightly higher price range. I did not like the idea of writing such a "Kleine
Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes" and only approached it after years of hesitation,
because working on something new is always more appealing than abridging what is
already there and chewing over what is already there. Moreover, I had always been able
to cite Kraitschek's excellent "Rassenkunde" (Vienna 1924) as a brief account that
essentially agrees with my view. Only since I had included (after Paudler, Lenz,
Hentschel and Kern) the Faelic (Dalic) race and (after Reche) the Sudetic race had more
substantial differences between Kraitschek's and my view emerged.
In the end, I believed that I could no longer resist the idea of writing a "Kleine Rassenkunde
des deutschen Volkes" - convinced that the attention to the innate - to heredity, race,
selection, racial composition and racial change of the occidental peoples and the possibilities
of a regeneration of these peoples through hereditary health and racial care - that has been
spreading for some years now, would be the right thing to do.
- should be seen as a sign of a turning point, which everyone who has gained these new
insights must feel obliged to bring about. May my decision to publish this book be kindly
understood in this sense!
With regard to the layout of the book, I would like to emphasise that the main focus of my
"Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes", 12th edition, 1928, so that the one
3
The reader who wants to find any details explained in detail can always refer to the
relevant section of the more detailed book, which is also easy to find using the page
references, and where further literature is always listed. I have tried to keep this book as
free of references as possible in order to be as brief as possible. In doing so, however, it
was unavoidable that evidence and proof for some assertions would be missing, as well
as the names of those who have provided such evidence and proof through their
research. Thus, here and there, too little will be revealed of how much I owe to the whole
of racial and hereditary research and how limited the share of my own thoughts in the
whole of the book is. To correct all this, I must refer again and again to my "Rassenkunde
des deutschen Volkes" and the literature mentioned in it.
Saaleck near Bad Kösen, in autumn 1928
1. The concept of race. The breeds of Europe
Much has been written about the race of man, about individual human races or what was
considered to be such, about the "race question" and the racial composition of peoples,
which - since it was about the race of man - caused much and protracted controversy. The
reason why the "racial question" could be argued about for so long and in a relatively
unfruitful way was mostly due to the fact t h a t both sides had not yet realised how the term
"race" was to be defined. The dispute was usually not about races at all, but about racially
mixed tribes, peoples or linguistically related groups of peoples. People argued about the
recognition or meaning of a "Germanic race", which was contrasted with a "Romanic race" or
a "Slavic race" - a "Jewish race" or a "Semitic race" was put forward. In doing so, one must
have completely forgotten that one may only call such a group of people a "race" if all of its
representatives show an essentially identical physical and mental image. Is it permissible to
speak of a "Jewish race" when there are tall and short, slender and thin, light and dark,
narrow-faced and broad-faced Jews, Jews with
"Jewish nose" and without a "Jewish nose", not to mention the differences in the mental
behaviour of individual Jews? A "Germanic race" was established and they were often
described as tall, blond and blue-eyed, and occasionally also as long-headed and
narrow-faced; their mental character was also roughly defined. However, the frequent
occurrence of physically and mentally very "un-Germanic" people among the peoples of
Germanic languages, such as the English, Dutch, Germans or Danes, should have
warned against the establishment of a "Germanic race", just as the not uncommon
occurrence of very "Germanic" looking and behaving people among populations of Slavic
or Romance languages, even among Caucasian tribes and Kurds. How could it be
possible to speak of a "Germanic" culture in the face of the multiplicity of the different
human races within the peoples of the Semitic language?
speak of a "Semitic race"? - In short, the terms "race" and "people" or "ethnic group" had
not been distinguished, linguistic affiliation had been confused with racial affiliation, and
racial boundaries had been seen where linguistic and ethnic boundaries were. It was only
with the strict definition of the term "race" and the gradual familiarisation of at least some
educated people with such a strict definition that a cogent and fruitful discussion of the
"racial question" or the various "racial questions" became possible. Furthermore, anyone
who spoke of a "German race" or an "English race", of a "Romance race" or a "Jewish
race" betrayed an ignorance of the basic concepts of what he was trying to say. "Race" is
a concept of anthropology that has been conceptualised in much the same way as
zoology and botany speak of families (familiae), genera, varieties (varietates) and
species. Eugen Fischer, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology,
Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem, described the following sentence of
greatness as the best definition of the term "race":
4
"Anthropology understands a race to be a larger group of people who are connected to
one another through the hereditary common possession of a certain innate physical and
mental habitus and are separated from other such groups." Accordingly, a race must
exhibit a correspondence of physical and mental traits in all its representatives and must,
of itself, repeatedly produce people with the same physical and mental traits. Where
essential differences of physical and mental disposition occur in a human group, where
children are essentially different from their parents or one of their parents, it cannot be a
question of a race or a pair of parents who are identical in their hereditary dispositions. I
have considered the following definition of the term "race" to be appropriate. A race is
represented by a group of human beings which is distinguished from every other group of
human beings (grouped together in such a way) by the combination of physical
characteristics and mental qualities peculiar to it and which only ever begets its own kind.
A race is therefore a group of human beings with the same hereditary characteristics. -
Anyone who has visualised the essence of race in this way must immediately realise that
it will hardly be possible to find a race anywhere on earth as a cohesive group of people.
With hardly any exception, the groups of people on earth who are united into a people by
the same language, the same customs or the same faith are racial mixtures, not races.
All occidental peoples are racial mixtures, in which all the races of Europe, or at least
several of the races of Europe, are represented in certain proportions, pure and mixed
together. What differs from nation to nation is - from a racial point of view - not the race,
but the mixing ratio of the races. In the racial mixture of one people, one race or several
races are more strongly represented than in the racial mixture of another people.
Whoever wished to assemble the racially cohesive or (since, as will be explained,
heredity and appearance need not coincide) the racially cohesive people of Europe into
uniform groups of people who appear to be of the same heredity would have to select
these people from all the peoples of Europe. At the same time he would discover these
uniform groups of people to be small minorities in comparison with the main mass of the
population of Europe, since the majority of the people of the Occident, as of the whole
earth, consist of mongrels of two or more races.
The Jews, who in the following are not counted as part of the racial mixture of Europe
because of their non-European racial origins, but are later considered separately, cannot
be regarded as a race according to the above explanations, but represent a racially
mixed people. If non-scientific usage does not want to abandon the term "race",
especially in the case of the Jews, this is due to the fact that in the racial mixture of the
Jewish people, physical and mental hereditary dispositions of non-European races
predominate, which stand out within the differently composed racial mixtures of
European and above all north-west European populations. In Europe, the average
European is not generally regarded as a bearer of racial characteristics, but the average
Jew is; for this reason, non-scientific usage will continue to speak of a Jewish "race" for a
long time to come, even though educated people have long since realised that the Jews,
like other peoples, represent a racial mixture.
Racial research (anthropology) uses certain methods of measuring and describing
physical characteristics, which cannot be described in detail here, to investigate human
races according to their physical appearance and to establish different human races in a
particular area of the earth in which it finds certain racial mixtures (tribes, peoples,
groups of peoples). For the sake of brevity, it is also not possible to report here on how
racial research arrives at the establishment of a specific number of races within an area
of the earth. This book aims to distinguish five main European breeds, plus the more
5
or less distinct influences of less represented races. Some researchers have assumed
fewer, some more European breeds.
Even the layman who surveys the populations of Europe, despite all the mixing of the
European races today, still recognises some people who appear to him to be racial. In
southern Europe, he believes he can recognise a small, slender, dark type with fluid
movements and an agile, passionate soul, which lends the Italian, Spanish and French or
at least southern French peoples something that is often referred to as a "Romance
type". He believes that in England, Friesland, northern Germany and Scandinavia, but
also in Central Europe and even beyond, he recognises a tall, slender, light-coloured
type that reminds him of Greek and Roman writers' descriptions of the Greeks and which
he would like to call the "Germanic race". He believes that in Eastern Europe he can
distinguish a stocky complexion with protruding cheekbones, which he perceives as
"Slavic" and which he would also like to regard as a "Slavic race", unless he has realised
while travelling that this complexion can at most be represented in a smaller admixture
among the South Slavic Slovenes, Croats, Serbs and Montenegrins. If the layman
observing in this way now
z. If, for example, he finds within the German people that small, dark stroke or that
"Slavic" stroke, or if he encounters, for example, in Russia or in Romania or in Spain that
tall, bright stroke, either his views become confused or he searches for the historical
events that transplanted this stroke there and that one here. The layman's ideas can
hardly be more precise than this. Whether that small, dark or that tall, light-coloured
clade is narrow or broad, whether this "Slavic" clade is light or dark, usually remains
unknown and must remain unknown to the layman, who is mostly familiar with the often
mixed Western peoples, less often with the even less mixed ones. Here and there, even
among laypeople, the term "mixed" has survived from the times of ethnological and
linguistic research.
The notion of a "Celtic race" is based on the "Celtomania" of the 19th century and the
outdated textbooks of older race researchers. A broad-faced or round-faced, short, darkcoloured
type with a round head is widespread throughout the western world. Despite
Roman writers' descriptions of tall, blond Celts, this was once regarded as "Celtic", and
the French - not today's French racial researchers - still use the idea of a "Celtic race"
today, or are using it again for advertising purposes in the pseudo-country. If there were
such a thing as a "Celtic race", its physical and mental traits would have to be common to
the main part of the tribes of the Celtic language, the main part of the Bretons, the Irish
and the Gaels of Scotland. But this is not the case. Nevertheless, these lay ideas are
based on the observation of a type of people that is still recognisable despite all the
mixing of the western population: a stocky, dark, round-headed type.
Only in the case of this latter type - as all kinds of pictorial representations, products of
unconsciously racialising artists can show - has a head shape been captured by the
layman's eye. In other cases, only shape and facial features or, finally, skin, hair and eye
colours have been recorded. The popular conception of the racial composition of the
Western peoples can hardly be clearer, and more than the more conspicuous non-
European features are generally hardly noted in the case of the Jews.
Since racial science has gained a certain reputation among the educated in Germany as
a science that has particularly valuable knowledge to impart to individual peoples, and
since racial knowledge has begun to influence immigration legislation in the United
States and Australia, a certain amount of attention has also been paid in Germany by
educated laymen to the workings of racial research. However, the details of scientific
findings and procedures are becoming more widely known,
6
which have already lost some of their significance among scientists themselves, the head
index or skull index, i.e. the number that expresses the ratio of the width of the head or
skull to the length of the head or skull, plays a major role in popular conceptions today.
Anthropological skull measurement began with this length-width ratio and its numerical
expression, but ultimately considered it necessary to calculate a very large number of
such ratios (indices) for the racial characterisation of a head or skull. In the course of the
development of anthropometric measurement methods, a larger number of indices were
added for the racial characterisation of the proportions of the entire human body.
If in the following we refer to the length-width index of the head, which is higher in one
breed and lower in another, then this index may only be understood as one index among
others, and the breed characteristic or characteristics indicated by it only as one
characteristic or characteristics among others. This also applies to every other breed
characteristic; the characteristic of long-headedness or short-headedness, for which the
length-width index is a numerical expression, was and is often overestimated in lay
circles in its importance and rarely understood as one characteristic among many other
characteristics characterising a breed. It seems that at present the results of the still very
young blood group research - a very valuable enrichment of the racial research process -
are overestimated in scientific circles. The exaggeration of the length-width index of the
head or skull seems to have turned into an equally untenable underestimation in our
days in non-scientific circles. Even in this brief description, some hints about the
aforementioned index, the facial index and other findings must be given in order to
understand the following racial description and racial maps.
A long head or long skull is a head or skull whose longitudinal diameter (viewed from
above) considerably exceeds the transverse diameter; a short head or short skull is a
head or skull whose transverse diameter is closer to or almost equal to the longitudinal
diameter. One measures the greatest length and greatest width of the skull or the living
head (in a certain way and in relation to certain skull planes) and then expresses the
transverse dimension as a percentage of the longitudinal dimension; the percentage
found is called the skull or head index. For example, if a skull is as wide as it is long, it
represents a very pronounced short skull with an index of 100. If the width of a skull is
70% of the length, the skull is a long skull with an index of 70. Long skulls are counted up
to index 74.9, medium skulls from 75 to 79.9 and short skulls from index 80 upwards.
This length-width index may say nothing about details of the skull shape. There are
differently shaped long heads as well as differently shaped short heads.
7
Fig. 1a. Long skull with index 72.9.
Fig. 1b. Short skull with index 88.3.
(from His-Rütimeyer, Crania
helvetica.)
Fig. 2a. Narrow face. (Index about 93.5.)
Fig. 2b. Broad face. (Index about 83.3.)
(From v. Hoelder, Schädelformen.)
The shape of the face is given as the ratio of the height of the face to the width of the
zygomatic arch, the former being expressed as a percentage of the latter. The height of
the face is (imprecisely labelled) the distance of the root of the nose at the level of the
inner hair ends of the eyebrows from the lowest (not foremost) point of the chin. The
zygomatic arch width is the greatest outer distance between the zygomatic arches. The
percentage found is called the (morphological) facial index and is calculated on the skull:
up to 84.9 upwards broad-faced, from 85 to 89.9 medium-faced, from 90 upwards
narrow-faced.
A higher head index therefore indicates a shorter head, a lower one a longer one, while a
higher face index indicates a narrower face and a lower face index a wider face. This
information is important for understanding the maps in the
8
Section 6. Racial research carries out similar measurements on the entire skeleton or
body of the living person. Skin, hair and eye colours are
9
according to special colour charts with numerical gradations of the comparable colours.
In this way, a comprehensive measurement sheet is completed for the racial
identification of a person or skeleton.
The European races described below have not always been labelled the same by racial
researchers. The Nordic race (tall, long and narrow-faced, with light skin, hair and eye
colours) is occasionally still called Homo Europaeus. Other names are hardly used today
and have almost been forgotten.
The western race (short, long-headed, narrow-faced, with dark skin, hair and eye
colours) is usually called the Mediterranean race or Homo mediterraneus, often also the
Mediterranean race.
The Dinaric race (tall, short-headed, narrow-faced, with dark skin, hair and eye colours)
received its common name after the Dinaric Alps, an area of strong predominance of this
race. Some researchers do not want to assume a separate Dinaric race (at least for the
time being, before closer examination), but regard this type of people as a variety or only
a branch of the Near Eastern race, and the characteristics deviating from the Near
Eastern race as admixtures of mainly Nordic origin.
The Eastern race (short, short-headed, broad-faced, with dark skin, hair and eye colours)
is usually referred to as the Alpine race or Homo alpinus, although occasionally also as
Dark Eastern. This race has also not been recognised as such and has been described
as a branch of the inner-Asian race, as the most western
"Mongolians", which in Europe would have experienced all kinds of influences of
European breeds with a special re-breeding effect.
The East Baltic race (short, short-headed, broad-faced, with light skin, hair and eye
colours) has also been referred to as the Eastern Baltic or Light Eastern race. Some
researchers are still reluctant to recognise an East Baltic race because they believe that
the people in question can be regarded as an inner-Asian-Nordic racial mixture
approximated to an actual race through special selection.
The Faelic breed (very tall, medium to long-headed, broad-faced with light skin, hair and eye
colours), apparently a continuation of the Palaeolithic Cromagnon breed, must be regarded
as an influence that is particularly important for the racial composition of Germany. It is also
known as the Dalish race because it was (wrongly) assumed that it was particularly strongly
represented in the Swedish landscape of Dalarne (= the valleys). The name "Faelic breed"
was chosen after the German and European area where an influence of this breed still
seems most recognisable today, Westphalia. Several researchers do not, or do not yet, want
to recognise a separate Palatine race, but regard this race as a (broadened, coarsened and
heavier) variety of the Nordic race or as a race from which the Nordic race was formed by
selection in prehistoric times.
A recognisable or presumed influence in East Germany, Bohemia and Poland and
neighbouring areas is the Sudetic race (low-grown, medium to short-headed, mediumwidth
face, dark skin, hair and eye colours), which is not yet recognised by most
researchers, but is regarded as a type of people who represent a racial mixture on the
basis of the inner-Asian race. Within the above-mentioned races, one may assume that
certain types differ from each other in less essential details, often hardly measurable
details, e.g. a Scandinavian type of the Nordic race as opposed to an Asian type.
10
German or English or, for example, a Franco-Belgian strain of the East German race as
opposed to an East German-Czech one. However, the majority of deviations, as they are
envisaged here, are possibly only overprints of a non-hereditary nature, expressed in
hereditary terms: paravariations caused by language, dialect, common attitudes and
movements adopted from the human environment, etc. It is clear that above all the
mental behaviour of the individual races appears somewhat modified by the folk or tribal
spirit. Those who seek to recognise the essentials of the physical and mental disposition
of a race must try to see through such influences.
2. The physical characteristics of the European breeds
a) The Nordic race
She is tall, leggy, slim, with an average male height of around 1.74 metres. The limbs,
neck, outline of the hands and feet appear strong and slender. The Nordic breed is longheaded
and narrow-faced with a length-width index of the head around 75 and a facial
index over 90. As with all breeds, at least the medium- and long-headed ones, the female
head seems to have a higher length-width index and lower facial index than the male. A
characteristic feature of the Nordic head is the occipital protruding far beyond the nape.
However, the protruding part of the occiput is relatively low, so that in Nordic people a
higher part of the neck can be seen above the collar of the skirt, above which the occiput
then swings out backwards. The face is narrow with a rather narrow forehead, a narrow,
high nose and a narrow lower jaw with an emphasised chin. The facial profile of the
Nordic race - at least in males - appears peculiarly bold due to a threefold jump in the line
of the facial profile: first in the forehead, which is tilted back over a wide area, then in the
straight or outwardly curved nose emerging from the high root of the nose, and finally in
the emphasised chin. The soft parts support the expression of a clearly characterised
face. In the female sex, the forehead is usually more arched back than tilted back, the
nose less sharply defined, the chin less emphasised.
Fig. 3a, b. Schleswig. Nordic. Nose and chin still childlike
11
Fig. 4 Westerwald. Nordic Fig. 5
Lower Saxony. Nordic (Rec.:
Günther, Goslar)
Fig. 6 Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Nordic Fig.
7 Lower Saxony. Nordic (photo:
Fikentscher)
12
Fig. 8 a, b. Munich. Nordic with a slight Dinaric influence (chin shape)
Fig. 9 Bavaria. Swabia. Nordic with a slight Dinaric influence Fig. 10.
Nordic. Traits still youthfully soft
13
Fig. 11 Austria. Nordic with Dinaric influence Fig. 12.
Markgräfler (southern Baden) Predominantly Nordic
The skin of the Nordic race is rosy-bright and lets the blood shimmer through, so that it
looks particularly revitalised, but usually somewhat cool or fresh. The skin of the face
appears "like milk and blood", at least in youth and in the female sex often until middle
age.
The hair falls smooth and straight or wavy, also curly in childhood; the individual hair is
soft and thin. The hair colour is blonde, which can range from light blonde to golden
blonde to dark blonde with a reddish undertone. Northern children are often whiteblonde.
People who are light blonde in their youth often become dark blonde later on,
often with dark hair: a phenomenon known as darkening, which is also seen as a sign of
a Nordic (or even Faelic or East Baltic) influence in otherwise non-Nordic people.
Part of the red hair, insofar as it is still reddish blonde or golden red, may still be
described as normal. Actual chestnut-red hair, however, occurs in all human races; this
phenomenon is known as rutilism or erythrism. The beard of the Nordic race consists of
curly or curly blond to reddish-blond hair. The beard growth is quite abundant.
The Nordic eye, i.e. its iris, is blue, blue-grey or grey. Nordic eyes often have something
radiant about them, and in certain moods also an expression that the Romans
recognised in the (predominantly Nordic) Germanic peoples as a
"terrible look".
The physique of the Nordic breed apparently results in a special aptitude for middledistance
running, throwing and jumping.
b) The western race
She is short, but not stocky, rather petite and slender with an average male height of
around 1.60 metres. The western figure looks like a diminished Nordic one, rather the
height of the legs is even more emphasised than in the Nordic race. The wide hips of the
western woman also hardly diminish the impression of slenderness.
14
Fig. 13. southern France (Arles). Western
Fig. 14. Corsica. Western
Fig. 15. from a noble Brazilian family. Western Fig. 16 Algeria. Western
The shape of the head is the same as that of the Nordic breed, except that the forehead
is proportionally somewhat lower, also more rounded towards the sides and upwards and
backwards, i.e. more arched back than tilted back. The nose is relatively shorter and
rarely as sharply defined as in the Nordic breed, usually straight or slightly turned up, in
rarer cases perhaps also slightly curved. The chin is less emphasised and more rounded.
The whole facial profile is therefore softer, one might say more feminine than in the
Nordic breed; the soft parts also contribute to this.
15
Fig. 17: German-Eylau, one grandmother Polish, one American. Predominantly western Fig.
18 Pomerania. Grandmother from western Switzerland. Predominantly western
with a Nordic flavour
Fig. 19 Southern Italy (Naples). Mascagni. Predominantly
Western (with a slight Negro flavour?) Jewish ancestry?
Fig. 20 Sicily. Western The skin is brownish in colour and appears warm and smooth.
There is hardly any red in the cheeks, the red of the lips tends towards a bluish colour.
The hair falls smooth and straight, often curly; the individual hairs are soft and thin. The
colour is brown, black-brown or black. The eyebrows are thicker than in the Nordic breed
and the eyelashes appear to be longer.
The beard is brown or black, the beard growth quite abundant. The
eyes are brown to black-brown with a warm colour.
16
Western, but also Nordic-Western people often seem to show a special talent for fencing.
c) The Dinaric breed
The average height of the male may be around 1.73 metres. The breed is therefore tall,
long-legged, but coarse and slender. The arm length is relatively shorter than in the
previously considered breeds, the joints less fine, the neck probably a little thicker or
shorter.
The head shape shows short-headedness combined with narrow-facedness. The head
index may be around 85-87. The longitudinal diameter of the head is only slightly larger
than the broad diameter because the occiput hardly extends beyond the nape, indeed in
most cases it looks chopped off. In many cases, the high occiput rises like an extension
of the neck. The narrow face of the Dinaric breed is mainly due to the relatively long nose
and the high, coarse chin; the forehead is usually relatively wider than in the breeds
described above. The facial profile is characterised by a slightly sloping forehead, a nose
that rises from a high nasal root, sinks downwards in the cartilaginous part - often with an
accentuated angle (eagle nose) - and ends fleshy towards the bottom. In the Dinaric
breed, the nasal septum extends lower down than the nostrils, so that more of it is visible
in side view than in the other European breeds. The chin is high and coarse, more
rounded than in the northern breed.
Fig. 21 Freiburg i. Br. Dinaric-NordicFig.
22 Hotzenwald (southern Baden). Dinaric (recording: Gersbach, Säckingen)
17
Fig. 23 a, b. South Tyrol. Dinaric
Fig. 24 a, b Vienna; predominantly Dinaric; K: 85.50; G: 91.04 (with tooth loss), 75yr.
18
Fig. 25 Bamberg. Ignaz Döllinger, b. 1799. a:
brown. Dinaric-Nordic (Gem.: Lenbach)
Fig. 26 Upper Bavaria. Dinaric (Rec.: Johannes, Partenkirchen)
Fig. 27 a, b. Immigrants from Poland to Oldenburg, Dinaric. (Recorded by Havemann)
19
Fig. 28: Ritten (Tyrol). Dinaric with a Nordic flavour (municipality: Riss, Merano)
Fig. 29 Prince Karl Auersperg, 1814-1899, Austrian statesman. Statesman. Predominantly
Dinaric
The soft parts: Mention was made of the nose, which ends fleshy towards the bottom and
usually shows fleshy wings set off in a characteristically curved line. The lips are fuller, at
least wider than in the Nordic breed.
More frequently than in other European breeds, deep wrinkles appear, which lead down
from the wings of the nose towards the corners of the mouth. The upper eyelid appears
"heavy", it often lacks a slight cover fold that runs across the upper eyelid in other
European breeds, which is why the Dinaric upper eyelid often appears peculiarly smooth.
Dinaric people often have fleshy and rather large ears. The skin is brownish in
colour.
The hair usually falls curly, rarely straight; the individual hair is thin and quite soft. The
hair growth, also in the body hair, is strong, the beard growth very abundant. The hair is
brown to black in colour.
The eyes are brown to black-brown.
d) The Eastern race
They are short and stocky, so despite having roughly the same average height, as a
stocky breed they present a very different picture to the petite, slender western breed.
The average height of the Eastern male may be around 1.63 metres. Broad shortness is
expressed in the whole physique in the stocky, short legs with their stocky, heavy calves
and short, broad feet, in the broad, round hand, which often has something padded about
it, with its short fingers. The legs of the female sex, however, seem to be relatively
narrower than those of the female sex of the other European races.
The head is broad and round and sits on a short, stocky neck with an inclination towards
the
"Bull neck". The head index may average around 88, the facial index below
20
83 The length-width index of the head is so high in the Eastern breed because the width
diameter of the head is relatively considerable. The Eastern head can be called a round
head. It is only slightly arched over the nape of the neck, but is built quite high in the
slightly arched occipital part, so that in the Eastern man only a little of the neck is visible
above the skirt collar.
Fig. 30: Ritten (Tyrol) Ostisch (photograph of the Hofrat Toldt
Collection, Vienna) Fig. 31: Renchtal (Black Forest). Ostisch
(photograph by Busam, Oberkirch)
Fig. 32a, b. Wolfach (Baden). Occiput too strongly bent. (Rec.: Dr
Ammon) Strongly predominantly eastern
21
Fig. 33 Bonndorf office (Black Forest). (Rec.: Prof. Fischer, Berlin) Fig. 34.
Amt Neustadt (Baden Black Forest). Ostisch (recording: Ruf, Freiburg i. Br.)
Fig. 35 Vienna. Horsetzky, troop leader. Eastern with Dinaric influence Fig. 36.
Switzerland. Karl Stauffer-Bern. Minor Nordic and Dinaric influence
(Etching: Self-portrait)
22
Fig. 37 Marienburg (West Prussia). Ostisch. (Photograph: Sanitätsrat Dr
Rosenow) Fig. 38. South Tyrol. Eastern Dinaric (photo: Abresch,
Bolzano)
Fig. 39 Renchtal (Baden). Ostisch (recording: Busam, Oberkirch)
Fig. 40. Schappachtal (Black Forest) Ostisch
The face has a blunt appearance due to a steeply rising forehead that is rounded back
and to the sides, a rather flat nasal root, a short, lower nose that sits bluntly over the
upper lip, and an unexpressed, broadly rounded chin.
The soft tissue supports the impression of being broad, round and blunt due to its fat
deposits and perhaps thicker skin covering. Fat is often found on the root and bridge of
the nose, on the zygomatic bones (cheekbones), in and above the upper eyelid. In
contrast to the deep-set eyes of the breeds considered so far, the eyes are set flat to the
front in the broad, round face and appear small with a low and shorter eyelid, more often
in
23
The eyelids are slightly slanted, pulling outwards and upwards. With age, the eastern
face becomes slightly spongy.
The skin is yellowish-brown in colour and appears lifeless.
The hair falls hard, sometimes almost tight. The individual hair is thick. The hair colour is
brown to black; the beard growth and apparently also the body hair are sparser than in
the European breeds considered so far.
The eye colour is brown to black-brown without the warm tone of western eyes.
e) The East Baltic race
They are also stocky and stocky in detail, like the Eastern race, but have a somewhat
greater average height. A certain coarseness of bone is noticeable in the Eastern Baltic
man, also in the considerable shoulder width.
The head also appears broad and coarse-boned. It is relatively large and heavy with a
facial part that appears particularly bulky compared to the brain part. The broad, short,
massive and bony lower jaw also contributes to this. The head index may be somewhat
lower
Fig. 41 a, b. Liegnitz district (Silesia). Predominantly eastern Baltic (A: light
blue) (Rec.: Collection Sanitätsrat Dr Rosenow, Liegnitz)
24
Fig. 42 Silesia. H: ash blond, A: grey. East Baltic (Drawing: L. v. Küster)
Fig. 43 Silesia. A: brown. Predominantly eastern Baltic. (Drawing: L. v.
Küster)
than in the Eastern breed, because apparently the back of the head is slightly more
arched than in the Eastern breed, while the width of the head is the same. The facial
index is a little higher than in the Eastern breed, because with the same considerable
Fig. 44 Königsberg. Predominantly East Baltic - with a Faelic flavour?
Fig. 45 Saxony. Predominantly eastern Baltic with an eastern flavour
25
Fig. 46 Lüneburg Heath. Predominantly East Baltic
Fig. 47 Moravia. Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, née Countess Dubskn. East Baltic
The height of the face (due to a higher lower jaw and a greater height of both jaws in the
area of the dental compartments) is more considerable than in the Eastern breed.
Fig. 48 New Ruppin. K. F. Schinkel, master builder, 1781-1841.
East Baltic with a Nordic flavour
Fig. 49 Dresden v. Lenser, painter, born 1793, East Baltic-Nordic
(drawing: Vogel v. Vogelstein)
26
Fig. 50 Tapiau (East Prussia) Lovis Corinth, painter, 1858-1925. eastern Baltic-nordic
Fig. 51 Old Bavaria. Predominantly East Baltic with a Dinaric flavour?
The face appears blunt. The forehead is less arched back than sloping back, but not
strongly inclined. The root of the nose is rather flatter than in the Eastern race; the nose
is curved and short and appears particularly "ugly" (to Western eyes) in that it is both
upturned in the lower part and wider and blunter with the wings than is generally the case
with the Eastern race. The jaws have a slight tendency to protrude forwards, whereas in
the other European breeds they are directed towards each other. The massive lower jaw
shows a blunt chin.
The soft parts show less fat deposits than in the Eastern breed, so they do not conceal
the coarse bone of the face. The palpebral fissures of the eyes extend slightly upwards
from the inner to the outer corner of the eye (more pronounced in females than in males).
Due to the narrowness of the palpebral fissure, the East Baltic eye also appears small;
the distance between the inner corners of the eyes is relatively greater than in the breeds
considered so far.
The skin is light, but not rosy-bright; it usually has a grey undertone.
The hair falls hard, even tight; the individual hairs are thick. The beard growth is thin with
fairly long, tight whiskers. The hair colour is light, but tends more towards ash blonde
than golden blonde. Where the Nordic hair colour usually has a golden or reddish
undertone, the Eastern Baltic has a grey undertone.
The eye colour is grey, grey-blue, white-blue or blue, rarely actually blue, more often grey
or white-blue.
The physicality of the East Baltic breed, combined with the tenacious doggedness that
characterises the mental behaviour of this breed, is apparently particularly suited to longdistance
or endurance running.
27
f) The Faelic breed
It is very tall, on average, at least in the male sex, somewhat taller than the Nordic race,
but not slender like the latter, but broad and tall, "box-like", heavy, bulky, even fourlegged.
The bulky appearance is repeated in details: in the massive head shape on a
rather stocky neck, in the large shoulder width and the hip width, which is not small even
in males, and also in the heavy joints.
The Faelic race has a broad (low) face and a long to medium head. One could compare
the Faelic face with a Nordic face that is broad from above and below, whereby the eye
area would have been compressed and the nose shortened, so that the midface would
have had to bear the main part of the widening or shortening. Like the Nordic and
Western heads, the Faelic head protrudes far back over the neck, but usually in a more
angular, heavier shape.
Fig. 52 a, b. Finkenwärder (Elbe estuary). Predominantly
Palaeolithic (recording: Scheidt, Hamburg)
28
Fig. 53 a, b. Finkenwärder (Elbe estuary). Predominantly
Palaeolithic. (Recording: Scheidt, Hamburg)
Fig. 54 Hanover. Faelic-Nordic Fig. 55
Westphalia. Faelic
(Collection of medical officer Dr Rosenow, Liegnitz)
29
Fig. 56a, b. Upper Franconia, Bavaria. Predominantly Faelic with a slight Dinaric flavour
Fig. 57 Berlin. M. v. Scholz, poet. Faelic or predominantly Faelic
Fig. 58 Area of Hersfeld, Hesse-N. Predominantly Faelic with an eastern flavour
30
Fig. 59 Poznan. From Hindenburg and Beneckendorf. Predominantly
Faelic (but not occipital form)
Fig. 60 Prussian nobility from the Italian von Caprivi family, Imperial
Chancellor. Faelic with an eastern flavour
The facial profile is characterised by a less high forehead (compared to the Nordic or
Dinaric race), which rises somewhat more steeply than the Nordic forehead in general,
by an umbrella-like thickening of the frontal bone above the eye sockets, which no longer
(as in moderate strength in the Nordic and Dinaric race) produces over-eye arches, but
almost an over-eye bulge running over the root of the nose, eyes set deep backwards
and appearing rather small when embedded in a low socket, a strong, not long nose
ending in a rather blunt tip, a chin which is emphasised but appears blunter due to its
coarser, less set-off shape. The entire lower jaw also appears massive due to the
emphasised lower jaw angles.
The soft parts emphasise the impression of massiveness through the appearance of a
stronger nasal lip crease (cf. p. 32) even at a younger age, through a crease from the
corners of the mouth towards the chin, through a rather wide mouth with thin, pressedlooking
lips. The horizontal line is emphasised by the brow furrows, the rather wide, hardlooking
cleft of the mouth and the accentuated, often protruding angle of the lower jaw.
As in the East Baltic breed, the distance between the two inner corners of the eyes is
greater than in the other European breeds.
The skin is rosy-bright, tending towards a reddish-bright colour on the face, but without
the particular demarcation of a red cheek as in the Nordic race. The skin of the whole
body makes a thicker, coarser impression than that of the Nordic or Western race.
The hair is somewhat harder than in the narrow-faced breeds of Europe, apparently less
often straight, more often wavy or curly than in the Nordic breed. The hair on the head is
very dense and apparently very resistant even with age. Its colour is similar to that of the
Nordic breed, perhaps tending slightly more towards reddish.
The eye colour is light, perhaps tending towards grey rather than blue.
31
g) The Sudetic race
The Sudetic breed, which has not yet been described in detail, has a low average height,
about 1.60 metres in males.
The head, of relatively small size, can be described as medium to short-headed, with an
ovoid rather than round shape, more pointed towards the forehead when viewed from
above and rounder towards the slightly arched occiput. The face is of medium width with
strongly emphasised cheekbones, which often reach further forwards than the upper
edge of the eye socket. The facial profile is characterised by a steep, low forehead, a flat
nose with slightly outwardly flared sidewalls, protruding, almost snout-shaped jaws and
an unaccentuated, weak chin. The eyes are flat, set forward. Skin, hair and eye colours
are dark.
Fig. 61 a, b. Immigrants to Oldenburg from Poland. Predominantly Sudetic (photo:
Havemann)
32
Fig. 62 a, b. District of Lüben (Silesia). East Baltic-Sudetic? (A: light grey to light brown,
H: dark blond.) (Rec.: Collection Sanitätsrat Dr. Rosenow, Liegnitz)
Fig. 63 Silesia. Predominantly Sudetic with a Nordic influence Fig. 64.
Szczecin. Predominantly Sudetic with a Nordic flavour
33
Fig. 65 Western Galicia, from a German-speaking family. Sudeten Fig.
66: Zittau (Saxony). Sudeten-Nordic H: blond)
3. Influences of non-European races within German-speaking populations
In addition to these races, which have been called European races since prehistoric
times because of their presence in Europe, and of which the first five can be called the
five main European races, since they make up the main mass of the European
population, pure and mixed, Europe and the German-speaking area have also received
influences from non-European races.
From Africa, the south of Europe received a slight Negroid influence, which then
occasionally reached the German-speaking area through various German-Southern
European connections, most likely, as appearance shows, the south of the Germanspeaking
area. The bearers of such an influence, e.g. Italian labourers or traders, may
often have carried such hereditary traits with them, or partially covered them up, which
then became more apparent in their offspring fathered by German women. In the south
and west of the German-speaking area, a perceptible, very slight Negro influence may
also go back to Roman times, to those Africans who served in the Roman army. Today,
in the west of the German-speaking area, this very slight influence has probably been
considerably intensified by the "Black Shame", the impregnation of German women and
girls by members of the North African troops of France on German soil.
34
Fig. 67 a, b. Transylvania. Inner-Asiatic-Dinaric or Inner-Asiatic-Fore-Asiatic
Fig. 68 Holland Van Haanen (painter) Nordic with a Malay influence? (Drawing:
Vogel v. Vogelstein)
Fig. 69: Dahomey Negroes in the French army
(photo: v. Eickstedt)
From Asia an influence of inner-Asian (Mongolian) race reaches towards Central Europe,
decreasing in strength from the east. This influence is very clear in certain areas of
Russia, less so in Hungary and Poland, and is still perceptible in the east of the Germanspeaking
area, probably above all in the area of the German-Polish language border and
in the racial mixture of Vienna. In lesser admixture with other European races, it is often
difficult to decide whether certain characteristics can still be explained by Eastern,
Eastern Baltic or Sudetic or already by inner-Asian influence. After all, a certain flat
emptiness of the facial features with clearly sloping eyelids and even black or blue-black,
tight hair clearly indicates an inner-Asian influence. In Holland (which, as an area of
Lower Franconian dialect, belongs to the German-speaking area)
35
The Dutch-Malay population, at least in the urban populations, shows an unmistakable
influence that can be explained by Dutch-Malay connections. Dutch-Malay mixed
marriages are by no means hindered by Dutch legislation. From the Near East, a clear
influence of the Near Asian race extends towards the west and north far into southeastern
Europe, first in the northern Ukraine, becoming less distinct in the southern
Slavic areas, but still very clear in Greece and also perceptible in southern Italy, Sicily,
Spain and other areas described in more detail in my "Rassenkunde Europas" (3rd
edition 1929). It was mainly through German-Southeast European connections, above all
through German-Jewish and German-Gypsy connections, but then also through
immigrating or travelling Armenian traders, that an influence of the Near Asian race
penetrated the German people.
Fig. 70 Imerians from Kutais. Near Eastern (photo: Anthrop. Institute Vienna)
Fig. 71 Georgians. Caucasus. Stalin, head of the communist party in Soviet Russia.
Party in Soviet Russia.
Near Eastern or predominantly Near Eastern
36
Fig. 72 Russia. Prince Bagration, of Armenian nobility. Near Eastern.
The racial features appear more clearly after the uniform is covered.
(Engraving: H. Davy after G. Davy)
Fig. 73 Caucasus. Georgian. Predominantly Near Eastern (From
a racial collection)
Fig. 74 Jew from Germany Fig. 75
Jew from Austria Predominantly
Middle Eastern
The Near Eastern breed is related to the Dinaric breed, i.e. it originates from the same
ancestral breed, from which the Dinaric and Near Eastern breeds must have developed
in different directions through selection. The pre-Asian breed is of medium size, stocky,
short-headed with a steeply sloping occiput and a medium-wide face. The eyes appear to
be a little more
37
in front than in the Dinaric breed. The nose gives more the impression of hanging out and
down than of jutting out, is probably generally even fleshier than that of the Dinaric breed
and, given the lower body height of the Near Eastern breed compared to the Dinaric
nose, appears as an even stronger, more massive nose. The lips are fleshier than those
of the Dinaric breed, occasionally even slightly bulging. The chin is lighter and stands
back more, so that the impression of a receding lower jaw is often created in Near
Eastern people, especially in comparison to the fleshy, protruding nose.
The Near Eastern breed tends to be obese, with fat deposits on the neck and a heavy double
chin, especially in the female sex. Their body hair and beard growth are very strong. The
thick eyebrows often grow together over the root of the nose.
The Jewish people have a very strong Near Eastern flavour. The Armenian people are
probably the most predominantly Near Eastern.
Through connections with members of peoples of North African or Oriental origin, the
populations of south-eastern and southern Europe have also acquired a more or less
distinct oriental racial flavour. Through connections with representatives of such
populations or through German-Jewish or German-Gypsy connections, the population of
the German-speaking area also acquired a very slight flavour of Oriental race. The
Semitic languages were originally spread by tribes of predominantly oriental race. The
Jewish people, descended from such a tribe of Semitic language, consisted on the soil of
Palestine in historical times mainly of an Oriental and Near Eastern racial mixture with
minor influences of other races, including the Nordic and Negro races. The Oriental race
is of medium height, slender, long-headed, narrow-faced, with a narrow nose, usually
curved only in the lower third, not particularly protruding, indeed occasionally somewhat
flat, which now and then shows a rather low-set, but always narrow nasal root. The lips
are slightly bulging, often curved as if smiling and appearing pre-pointed. The mouth and
tip of the chin are often prominent, while the chin groove (sulcus men- tolabialis) is
deeply recessed in between. The chin groove is also often higher than in other breeds,
which gives oriental faces a characteristic feature. The eyelid opening is often almondshaped,
i.e. the inner corner of the eye is more rounded, the outer corner more pointed,
with the eyelid opening extending slightly outwards and upwards.
38
Fig. 76 Mummy portrait a. Egypt, 2nd century A.D. Oriental.
Characteristic lip formation
Fig. 77 Assyrian. Nose curved in the last third. Oriental.
Characteristic lip formation
Fig. 78 Arab, sheikh from Palmyra. Oriental Fig. 79
Arab from the Algerian Sahara. Oriental
39
Fig. 80 Jew from Germany Predominantly oriental
Fig. 81 Mrs Meyerbeer, wife of the composer. Predominantly oriental
Fig. 82 Jew from Germany. Writer Ludwig Börne. Oriental-Fore-Asian Fig. 83 Georgian.
Predominantly Oriental with a Middle Eastern flavour (from Stiehl)
The skin is quite light in colour, often apparently lighter than the skin of the Western race,
but of a pale, not rosy brightness.
The hair is dark brown to black, mostly curly, the eye colour very dark.
The Oriental race is probably the closest relative of the Western race; the one can be
considered a slight variation of the other. Today, the Oriental race is most purely
preserved among the Arabian Bedouins.
The Oriental and Near Eastern races have gained the most significance for Europe
through those parts of the Jewish people who are among the European peoples.
40
live. The Jews are not a religious community, for there are Jews of various
denominations and many so-called free religious Jews who do not belong to any
particular denomination; the Jews are a people and, like every people, a mixture of
different races. This has already been discussed above on p. 12. The Jews are therefore
not members of a "Semitic race". There are peoples of Semitic language, and the Jews
originally belonged to them; but these peoples represent very different racial mixtures,
even if the Semitic languages were brought to them by tribes of predominantly Oriental
race. The linguistic expression of the Oriental racial soul may be sought, with Renan, in
the Semitic languages. The Caucasian (Alarodic) languages originally belonged to the
Near Eastern race.
A distinction is made between two groups within the Jewish people. 1. the Southern Jews
(Sephardim), who make up about one tenth of the total population and mainly form the
Jewry of Africa, the Balkan Peninsula, Italy, Spain, Portugal, part of the Jewry of France,
Holland and England; 2. the Eastern Jews (Ashkenazim), who make up nine tenths of the
total population of around 15 million and form the main part of Jewry in Russia, Poland,
Galicia, Hungary, Austria and Germany as well as in North America and part of Jewry in
Western Europe.
The Southern Jews represent a Oriental-Foreign-Asiatic-Western-
Hamitic-Northern-Negroid racial mixture with a predominance of the Oriental race; the
Eastern Jews represent a Near Eastern-Oriental-Eastern Baltic-Inner-Asiatic-Northern-
Hamitic-Negroid racial mixture with a predominance of the Near Eastern race.
In the Jewish people as a whole, the hereditary disposition of the Near Eastern race has
most likely prevailed, more or less modified by the other influences that characterise the
Jewish people. This mental disposition, which differs from the dispositions of the
European peoples, especially the north-west European peoples, in accordance with their
racial characteristics, is the cause of the so-called Jewish question, which is felt to be so
burning today. The difference in faith between the Jews of the Mosaic faith and the
peoples of other faiths among whom they live still plays a role here and there in Eastern
Europe, but has long since ceased to do so in the West. It is wrong to see the so-called
Jewish question as a Mosaic-Christian contradiction. It is equally wrong to want to
understand the so-called Jewish question as an economic question. Certainly, the main
representatives of the overpowering international loan capital are Jews and, as tax lists
show, the Jews are on average much wealthier than the non-Jews of the same national
territory, but the Jewish question is by no means the same as the question of capitalism.
It is the spiritual influence of a people of non-European racial origin, achieved through
economic superiority, that has actually created a Jewish question. The Jewish question is
a racial and ethnic question.
4. The mental characteristics of the European breeds
Racial science only acquires a special significance for the life of peoples in that race is not
only manifested in physical characteristics, but also in certain mental behaviour. This
manifests itself from people to people as a different mental behaviour in each case,
corresponding to the different confrontation of a particular racial mixture with a given
environment and a given spiritual tradition. Furthermore, this manifests itself from one
period in the history of a people to another as constancy or as change in the mental
behaviour of the people, depending on whether the racial mixture of this people has
remained approximately the same or has changed in its composition because the races
represented in the people have reproduced themselves to different degrees. Inequalities
in the mental traits of individual human races are also shown in the differences in the
mental behaviour of two different groups of a national or estate nature in the same
people,
41
insofar as such groups represent two differently composed racial mixtures. Racialemotional
inequalities are finally manifested in the differences in the emotional behaviour
of individuals.
Unconsciously, everyone regards their fellow human beings as having different racial and
emotional dispositions. A slender, narrow-faced person is generally expected to appear,
act and feel differently from a stocky, broad-faced person; a flat-nosed person differently
from a person with a narrow, high nose; a person with eyes set flat forward and an
unaccentuated chin differently from a person with eyes set back deeper and an
accentuated chin; a black-haired person differently from a blond, even a short-fingered
person differently from a narrow-fingered person, etc. A hundred years ago and more,
so-called phrenology sought to determine the spiritual nature of a person according to
the formal characteristics of his head; ancient Greek writers and those of the Italian
revival period, and then above all Lavater and his contemporaries who were inspired by
him, made attempts to draw conclusions about the spiritual nature of people from
characteristics of the whole body, especially the face. In our day, such attempts at
physiognomics (the science of physical expression, the science of facial expression)
have once again attracted a great deal of attention.
All these unconscious or conscious ideas are based on unconsciously or consciously
gathered experiences about the interdependence of physical and mental traits of the
individual European races. This is also shown by the fact that the more one tries to apply
these statements to non-European races, racial mixtures or individual human beings, the
less convincing are the statements about the significance of a physical characteristic for
the mental disposition of its bearer. For the most part, the statements are based on the
image of Western populations and individuals.
A source of unconsciously collected experiences about the reciprocal conditionality of
bodily characteristics with mental characteristics are the drawings of the joke sheets or
also the advertising drawings of the advertising columns, newspapers and magazines.
More about this in the following!
a) The Nordic race
If a draughtsman, painter or sculptor wishes to depict the bold, purposeful, determined or
the noble, noble or heroic human being, man or woman, he will usually create a human
image that comes more or less close to the image of the Nordic race. Even a person who
is to be regarded as a representative of the upper classes will, for example, be given
traits of the Nordic race much more readily by the cartoonists than traits of the non-
Nordic races of Europe.
In fact, one would like to describe thoughtful willpower, a certain capacity for judgement
with a coolly weighing sense of reality, the urge to be truthful from person to person, a
tendency to chivalrous justice as the psychological traits that are always noticeable in
Nordic people. Such traits can increase in individuals within the Nordic race up to a
distinctly heroic attitude, up to far-sighted leadership in the state or creativity in
technology, science and art. The relatively large number of predominantly Nordic and
Nordic people among the important and outstanding men and women of all occidental
peoples is striking, as is the relatively very small number of important men and women
without a noticeable Nordic flavour.
When people live together, the Nordic man generally appears calm in his movements
and words and - measured by the expression of his feelings - reserved, not infrequently
cool, indeed especially cool to the sensibilities of non-Nordic people.
42
cold and stiff or "uncomfortable". Nordic people generally have little aptitude or inclination
to empathise with the souls of others. Very dutiful Nordic people in particular can become
harsh, even ruthless, towards their human surroundings, even if - as members of the
lower classes - a certain chivalry never leaves them. A mischievous wit, averse to loud
talk, and good storytelling skills with a sense of plot and landscape can be found in the
Nordic race; within the sciences, there is more inclination towards technology and the
natural sciences than towards the humanities. A self-confidence (hardly emphasised in
comparison with others), a sense of competition and a bold, even exuberant, but rarely
outwardly revealed imagination, which nevertheless strives from reality back to reality via
a broad flight of thought, bring about the above-mentioned leadership and creativity in
the more talented people of the Nordic race.
Nordic boldness can turn into recklessness, carelessness, extravagance, Nordic
coolness into cold calculation - the outstanding statesmen of Europe are almost all
predominantly Nordic, and traits of cold calculation are not uncommon among them. The
urge to lead brings about the rise within the social classes that can be observed among
Nordic and predominantly Nordic families, usually at the price of keeping these families
small - this also entails the danger of the gradual extinction of the Nordic race.
As a rule, Nordic people mature late, remain unconcernedly youthful for longer, even
youthfully frivolous, and rarely lose the inclination to physical exercise, hiking and
travelling that is particularly prominent among the predominantly Nordic youth, just as the
predominantly Nordic people are most likely to emigrate among the occidental peoples. A
lively feeling for nature may also play a part in this.
The relatively greater frequency of predominantly Nordic people in all outdoor
occupations is striking. Within all classes a relatively greater physical cleanliness of
predominantly Nordic people can be recognised. A tendency towards a cultivated
appearance and a distinguished demeanour, which characterises the race, can generally
only be seen in the middle and upper classes.
b) The western race
As it is hardly represented in Germany by racially pure or strongly predominantly
Western people, we shall only briefly dwell on its emotional nature. It is an agile and
passionate race, easily excitable, easily conciliatory, vividly devoted to external
impressions, with a warm, but at the same time tense and curious interest in fellow
human beings, skilful in appearance and words, eloquent and inclined to clever
calculation. The western man wants to enjoy life, work little, and is concerned with his
honour in the eyes of others. His wit and eloquence are particularly evident in sexual
matters; a tendency towards cruelty, cruelty to animals and sadism is not uncommon
among predominantly Western populations. In family life, Western man shows a lively
love for his children; in state life, he betrays his low sense of order and thoughtful
considerations as well as his desire for change. A high rate of punishment for offences
and murder characterises the landscapes with a predominantly western population,
apparently most clearly in Sicily and Sardinia.
Apart from parts of Switzerland and the Austrian eastern Alpine region, a certain western
flavour is most evident in the German-speaking area in the Palatinate, in the Moselle
regions, in the Rheingau and, decreasing from there, probably as far as Elberfeld. An
observer such as W. H. Riehl found in the Rheingau the German type of people that
showed the most similarities with Italian character, a sense of
"stimulation and excitement" and for the "graceful", a certain "desire for opposition", a
slight excitability and prominent curiosity. The Palatine also places a lot of
43
They value polish in appearance and dress, are talkative, light-blooded and quick-witted.
They are also known by such characteristic names as "Pfälzer Krischer" and
"Kreuznacher Totschläger" and sees the Palatinate as characterised by a high rate of
punishment for dangerous bodily harm. In such traits, an influence of the western race is
expressed in western central Germany, which, by the way, can perhaps be assumed to
be a slight permeation throughout the entire area of the Franconian dialect.
c) The Dinaric breed
If artists want to depict the bold Alpine hunter, the reliable mountain guide of the Alps, the
Tyrolean freedom fighter against Napoleon or the heroic Montenegrin or Albanian warrior,
the powerful Alpine fighter of the French or Italian army, the image of a man of Dinaric or
predominantly Dinaric race will usually emerge, occasionally - namely with light-coloured
skin, hair and eyes - that of a Dinaric-Nordic or Nordic-Dinaric man, as well as the image
of a Dinaric or predominantly Dinaric woman, if an artist wants to depict a farmer's wife or
innkeeper running her household efficiently.
The Dinaric race is characterised in its mental behaviour by rugged strength and
straightforwardness, by a sense of honour and a pronounced love of their homeland, by
bravery and a pronounced self-confidence. She has a lively feeling for nature and a
sense for richly decorating the environment in house and landscape. A certain boldness
of the Dinaric man is more focussed on physical achievements than on a mental urge to
conquer, as is more common within the Nordic race. The Dinaric man also lives more in
the present than the forward-looking Nordic, which is why a purposeful spirit of enterprise
cannot develop within the Dinaric race. Characteristic is the Dinaric tendency to be quicktempered
and rowdy, but on the basis of a generally good-natured, sociable disposition.
The relatively high rate of punishment for dangerous bodily harm in the German southeast
must be attributed mainly to the predominance of the Dinaric race there. The Dinaric
tendency towards a coarse, somewhat rude and loud demeanour and a corresponding
sociability is unmistakable, as is the easily excitable enthusiasm of the Dinaric people,
who generally have a certain "verve" in their feelings and demeanour, as well as a rough
quick wit and vivid speech, often a pronounced talent for acting, and also a pronounced
knowledge of human nature with a tendency to a certain "shrewd" calculation of people,
especially their weaknesses. The Dinaric race is particularly gifted in the art of music,
especially singing. Nordic creative power and Dinaric talent for musical art - a talent that
is by no means lacking in the Nordic race, but which is not as abundant and, as it were,
as overflowing as in the Dinaric race - the combination of such hereditary traits has
obviously contributed most to the production of the great composers and musical artists
of the West: they were mostly Nordic-Dinaric people.
d) The Eastern race
If a draughtsman of Central European origin wants to depict the contemplative or sedate
bourgeois, the contented and self-satisfied regulars' table guest, a quiet bourgeois
couple, the "sunny" looking owner of a cottage with a narrow garden or a woman
labouring in a tightly enclosed environment or a gainfully employed small capitalist or
small trader with his family or even people of "shapeless" appearance and "lacking a
sense of distance", If the artist wishes to depict people of the middle and lower classes,
he will mostly draw stocky, round people with round faces, small eyes and blunt noses,
with short legs, round, padded-looking, short-fingered hands - in short, roughly the image
of the Eastern race. The draughtsman will - unconsciously made experiences of an
unconsciously developed in him
44
According to racial psychology, the physical characteristics of the Nordic, Western or Dinaric
race cannot be used for the indicated mental traits.
Racial researchers in various countries have noted the contemplativeness,
acquisitiveness and narrow-mindedness of Eastern people, as well as a certain sullen,
mistrustful aloofness in their dealings with distant people. The Eastern race represents
the "philistine" - this word is used to describe an attitude, not a class. The Eastern man is
patient, often sober, "practical". He is acquisitive in his small undertakings and
businesses, acquires various "educations" and often demonstrates a respectable
intelligence. Calmly and persistently, he can achieve civic prestige and positions in life or
professional success which, with a pronounced sense of usefulness, are accessible to
those who have no real boldness of feeling and action to deploy, but who limit their goals
more narrowly and pursue them with fairly even patience.
Eastern man tends to persevere, to cosiness, to the elimination of all competition; he
wants to combine the pleasant with the useful and likes to move within the views that
have prevailed among the masses. He "worships uniformity" (Lapouge), the mediocre
and the customary, which promises him comfort; hence, in the present period of Western
history, his "inclination towards the democratic doctrine of equality" (Ammon); hence the
not infrequently observed aversion, even hatred, of Eastern people towards everything
humanly superior in their environment and the tendency to grumble and envy.
The sense of the Eastern man is focussed on what is near and close, and is averse to
what is far away, to what is advancing, to frivolity, wastefulness and uselessness. Hence
the tendency to contemplation, to the quiet, cosy, "sunny" contemplation of close things
in a more closely enclosed world, which is evident in the more spiritual people of the
Eastern race, as well as their warm feelings towards people who have nothing
overbearing or aggressive about them. In the life of faith of Eastern people, too, there is a
self-contained warmth of feeling, a quietly guarded piety tending towards selfrighteousness.
The family of Eastern people usually forms a cohesive, busy group. In the state, the
Eastern man tends to form a mass, whereby his view does not usually extend far beyond
the family, village or neighbourhood. Warlike tendencies are far removed from the Eastern
man, but with appropriate leadership he seems to be just as suitable as a soldier for
defence as Nordic and Dinaric soldiers are for attack. He is generally a calm, adaptable
subject.
In the racial mixture of a people, the Eastern race represents a part represented in all
classes, generally decreasing from the lower to the upper classes, which contributes to
the prosperity of the whole through diligence, industriousness, thrift and moderation,
through warmth of mind and a certain "common sense" in leadership. For example, the
narrow-minded retiree's happiness after a busy working life is a genuinely Eastern ideal,
as it has developed in French life. However, the French state has built a substantial part
of its policy on the narrow-minded thriftiness of such pensioners.
e) The East Baltic race
It can be found that draughtsmen who want to depict devious, vindictive, servile or
dogged people give them the physical characteristics of the East Baltic race. Even when
depicting dull or greedy, hateful or fesslessly agitated beings, especially in the case of
people from the lowest strata of the population, (like
45
drawings by Käthe Kollwitz) were often chosen to characterise features of the East Baltic
race.
East Baltic people initially appear to strangers as withdrawn, brooding, ponderous,
suspicious, or even lurking, seemingly content with little, even dull or doggedly hardworking.
A closer look at their nature reveals much more complex traits. Eastern Baltic
people can become very talkative with those they know and reveal a dissatisfaction that
is never fully satisfied, a boundlessly wandering, blurred imagination that repeatedly lets
the conversation stray into confused ideas and plans, but which, given the Eastern Baltic
lack of a sense of reality and decisiveness, are hardly ever followed by creative actions
that promote a cause. For all his rambling talk of plans, the East Baltic man is averse to
innovation, ultimately leaving everything as it is, leaving everything "in God's hands",
always falling prey to a dull or gloomy belief in doom. In doing so, he endures a great
deal of hardship, oppression and suffering.
East Baltic people tend to have a mass spirit and to be led, and if they are appropriately
led, especially as they usually have a lively sense of country, they become willing
subjects whose attachment to those who lead them can increase to the point of
submissiveness. Eastern Baltic people are usually helpful and hospitable to those close
to them, often effusively accommodating, and affectionate towards their relatives.
Towards those far away, many East Baltic people tend to be devious and, when the
occasion arises, to be calculatingly vindictive. A tendency to crudeness and deceit is
unmistakable, which is probably the reason why East Prussia, Posen and Silesia appear
to be "criminally heavily burdened" (Aschaffenburg), above all through dangerous bodily
harm and simple and serious theft.
What is particularly striking about the East Baltic people compared to people of other
European races is the rapid change in their moods. From furious anger against a person
to conciliatory remorse, which accuses itself before this person, even indulges in selfaccusation,
from dejection to exaggerated exuberance, from blunt indifference to zealotry
(fanaticism), from submissiveness to arrogance, from saving in hard-working weeks to
reckless wastefulness, which can end in blind rage for destruction. "Nihilism" is an
Eastern Baltic mood.
The East Baltic man is a good judge of character and often a vivid portrayer of people,
even if there is always something confused and rambling about his descriptions, and a
tendency towards doggedly unscrupulous moods in his stories. A talent for playfulness
and tonal artistry, combined with a tendency towards the fluid and indeterminate, is
common among the East Baltic race. Physical cleanliness and the cleanliness of their
homes are generally low.
f) The Faelic breed
The Faelic race is mixed into the populations of Central and Western Europe, but rarely
in such large proportions that purely or strongly predominantly Faelic people appear
more frequently and have impressed their mental behaviour on the unconscious racial
observation of visual artists. Nevertheless, one occasionally sees that artists give those
human figures, through whose physical features they want to express a certain powerful
strength of soul or defiant firmness or honest reliability - as, for example, in depictions of
Heracles - that they give such figures false characteristics.
The Faelic man is just as strong and heavy in his soul as he is in his body. Strong
steadfastness, unshakeable realisation of calmly made decisions, the urge to be
conscientious and righteous, indeed a certain need to be true to himself.
46
characterise him. There seems to be something reassuring about the dependable solidity
of many a Faelic person, especially as the Faelic race, for all its gnarled nature and
unassertive seclusion, even rough dignity, is characterised by something warm-hearted,
a warm-heartedness and inwardness that also permeates the religious life of Faelic
people. A tendency to brood, to take life seriously (rarely or never expressed), is
characteristically Palatine.
If the Norse man appears to be advancing, of bold, attacking willpower, the Palatine man
appears to be persistent, of defiant willpower, which enables him to put up a strong
defence, but can also turn into stubbornness. Kern described the Palatine man as more
dignified than versatile, more sober than bold, more freedom-loving than domineering,
more weighty than creative.
Lenz finds that the Palatine people tended more towards architecture and the fine arts than
towards the art of music and eloquence. Within occidental architecture, I would like to
recognise in the Romanesque style a Palaeo-Nordic character, and in the Gothic style a
predominantly Nordic character. Among the images of important people of the occidental
peoples, one finds quite often those that depict a person with a stronger Palatine flavour: an
indication of the importance of the Palatine race in the life of the peoples. Lenz has drawn
attention to the fact that a combination of Nordic boldness and Palatine vigour produced such
men as Bismarck and Hindenburg. One could also cite here a man like Björnson and the
Palatine influence of Luther, whose well-known defence before the Diet of Worms is
characteristically Palatine in tone.
g) The Sudetic race
The mental characteristics of the Sudetic breed have not yet been described. As this
breed appears to be quite rare in purebred representatives, usually only as a more or
less distinct admixture, its mental behaviour will not be easy to research.
Information on the mental nature of the non-European races mentioned in this book can
be found in my other works on racial studies. The psychic nature of non-European races
is more important for a racial study of the German-speaking population only in the case
of the Jewish people scattered throughout Europe, which I have considered in my
"Rassenkunde des jüdischen Volkes" (2nd ed. 1930).
5. A few things about inheritance phenomena
In this section, only a few facts from the doctrine of heredity and selection can be briefly
summarised, just the little that seems indispensable for the most basic understanding of
racial and demographic phenomena. An attempt has been made to remain as
comprehensible as possible, even at the risk of appearing somewhat awkward here and
there to the expert by paraphrasing specialised scientific terminology.
In the 19th century, the physical and mental differences between people, tribes, peoples
or races were often attributed to the effects of the different agricultural environment, the
diet, i.e. both the quantity and the composition of the food, the habits of life in individual
groups of people, tribes or tribes, just as the different achievements of peoples and the
different course of their respective histories were essentially explained by environmental
conditions. Such explanations seem to have been attempted all the more, all the more
eagerly, because advancing political views, which eventually came to dominate with
overwhelming majorities due to the number of their supporters, have been able to assert
the equality of all peoples.
47
people and believed they had to assert them as an indispensable prerequisite for their
demands. Even today, for example, hereditary health researchers such as Grotjahn and
exponents of hereditary health and racial science such as K. V. Müller, both of whom
also belong to the Social Democratic Party, apparently do not find it easy to spread the
idea of the hereditary inequality of human beings in their circles, even though it would be
quite possible to justify socialist demands without the erroneous assumption of the
Enlightenment and Rousseau that human beings are "by nature" equal and good, an
assumption that has been constantly refuted by the everyday experiences of every
layman. It is likely that the environmental doctrines as well as certain similar assumptions
of a so-called heredity of acquired characteristics would have been recognised as
untenable for a long time and in wider circles if such assumptions were not still regarded
by many as an indispensable prerequisite for some political demands. It can be observed
time and again that the findings of heredity theory and racial research run counter to the
"spirit of the times" or at least certain after-effects of the "spirit of the times" of the second
half of the 19th century, that the better views of heredity and racial research are only
slowly gaining acceptance and, for the time being, more among individuals. It is likely that
both heredity theory and race research would have advanced much further and their
insights would have penetrated further into the consciousness of the general public if
they had been at all acceptable to the zeitgeist of the second half of the 19th century.
Since the turn of the century, however, a new world of thought has been in the making, to
which racial science and the study of heredity have made and can continue to make a
significant contribution.
In the 19th century, it was also easier to fall back on the assumption of direct
environmental influences, on the "milieu theory" of that century, because people easily
believed in the far-reaching possibilities of "inheriting acquired characteristics".
The doctrine that sought to explain the development of living beings, the descent of
higher forms from lower ones, through the inheritance of characteristics (physical traits,
mental abilities) that individual living beings had acquired through the use or non-use of
organs in their individual existence, is usually referred to as Lamarckism because it first
appeared in the "Philosophie zoologique" (1809) by the French naturalist Lamarck. Since
the hereditary attempts of the Augustinian priest Johann Mendel (1822-1884), or at least
since their rediscovery in 1900, the position of Lamarckism has become increasingly
difficult and the number of its scientific representatives has steadily decreased. The
validity of Darwinism, i.e. the doctrine of the development of living beings through
"natural selection", a doctrine derived from Darwin's famous "Origin of Species" (1859),
has increased to the same extent. Through its leading representatives - Morgan and his
school in North America, de Vries in Holland, Johannsen in Denmark, Correns, Baur,
Lenz in Germany - heredity research has spoken out against the assumption of
"inheritance of acquired characteristics". Also, for example, L. Plate, who in his
"Abstammungslehre" (1925) attempts to mediate between Lamarckism and Darwinism,
because the phylogeny of living beings does not appear to him to be explainable by
Darwinism alone, admits that up to now a perfect proof of an inheritance of acquired
characteristics has not been successful, and his presentation also makes it easy to
recognise, that processes within the realm of living beings, and thus also processes
which have led to the emergence of the human species and the individual human races,
and which appear to be more amenable to a Lamarckian than a Darwinian explanation,
have no significance whatsoever for the present possibilities in the area of the present
human races and the periods of time with which the far-reaching human plans could
reckon. For the consideration of the present human races and their favourable or
unfavourable influence, even those scientists of our day who still use Lamarckian ideas
for individual explanations are left only with selection in the sense of Darwinism as an
explanation - thus for discussions of phylogeny
48
as for future-oriented plans to influence the human condition and the average condition
of a population.
Heredity research, which is still in its infancy today, has shown how careful one must be
in assuming environmental effects, how existing differences between populations in
different areas of a continent, country or district or differences between the average
physical and mental constitution of two ethnic groups can mostly be explained by
hereditary factors. Hereditary research has also taught us to understand that changes in
the physical and mental appearance of a people are caused much less by the
environment or its changes than by selection, i.e. by the different degrees of
reproduction, the difference in the number of births within the individual areas or the
individual strata of a population speaking the same language.
It used to be believed, for example, that environmental influences gradually created a
uniform group of people with the same physical and mental traits from the various
different groups of people in North America. This is the "melting pot theo- ry", which
today's American race and heredity researchers smile about. Even today, such
assumptions are often spread with reference to the work of the anthropologist Boas (of
Jewish descent, North American citizenship). He had previously assumed stronger
environmental influences after he had found children of immigrant Jews to be somewhat
longer-headed and children of immigrant Sicilians somewhat shorter-headed than their
parents. However, neither the Jews nor the Sicilians are races, but mixed-race peoples in
which, as hereditary research has shown, the children may very well exhibit a number of
different characteristics than their parents. According to his more recent investigations,
Boas also only goes as far as the assumption of hereditary, not hereditary variations and
states that it could very well be the case that the same people, returned to their old
environment, would regain their former characteristics. - (The necessary distinction
between appearance and hereditary image will be discussed below).
The environment, including the mental environment, the spirit of the times, customs, etc.,
will be able to influence each population indirectly, namely through selection, by causing
a different degree of reproduction of individual sexes or entire ethnic groups. Thus a
population can change, but only by changing its composition, by changing the
proportions of its individual hereditary stocks. If a population were to be transferred from
an environment favourable to all its hereditary strains to another environment favourable
to only a part of its hereditary strains, this population would lose the less adapted part of
its hereditary strains through culling (reduced reproduction and finally extinction) and
would finally present a changed cross-section. In the 19th century, such changes caused
by selection in a certain environment - landscape and psychological - were almost
always explained by direct environmental influences. Only in more recent times have few
people recognised how drastic the changes in a population are that are brought about by
selection or eradication. Siemens gave an example of this in his highly recommended
volume "Vererbungslehre, Rassenhygiene und Bevölkerungspolitik" (4th edition 1930),
which was written "for educated people of all professions":
"If the average number of children of two breeds A and B is 3:4, then the originally
assumed equal ratio of 1:1 changes to 3:4 or, expressed as a percentage, to 43:57 per
cent after a single sexual succession, after two sexual successions to 9:16 or 36:64 per
cent, after three successions or just under 100 years to 30:70 per cent, and after 300
years, under almost the same conditions, breed A will have been reduced from half of a
population to the outwardly barely noticeable proportion of 7 per cent." - The population
in question has changed, but through selection, not through environmental influences.
49
The hereditary researcher's observation of selection processes by hereditary researchers
also sheds some light on the presumed circumstances that led to the formation of races.
The observation of selection processes by hereditary researchers also throws some light
on the presumed circumstances that led to the formation of races: From more or less
non-uniform groups of people, in some cases probably also from a mixture of previously
formed races, uniform, hereditary groups of people, races, have formed in a certain
environment and in a long period of isolation (isola- tion) through sharp selection. The
Norwegian anthropologist Bryn has attempted to identify the geological regions in which
some of the human races of the present day were formed through selection.
Selection alone will determine peoples and their history. If the environment could directly
influence people's genetic make-up, and if the inheritance of acquired characteristics,
which had almost become an article of faith in the 19th century, existed, then the
population of Central Europe, which had been exposed to roughly the same influences
for centuries and should have experienced roughly the same developmental impulses,
would have long since become an almost uniform group of people. The non-heritability of
the characteristics (traits, abilities) acquired by individuals in their individual existence on
the one hand, and the laws of racial cross-breeding on the other, explain why such an
equalisation of all hereditary traits has not long since taken place in Europe that the
average of all the characteristics of body height, stature (proportions), head and face
shapes, skin, hair and eye colours that exist today would be evenly distributed across all
European populations and especially the urban ones.
It is often assumed that when two or more breeds are crossed, the result is a
"Mixed breed", which derives approximately the same amount from each of the parent
breeds. Research has shown that this is not the case, but that after the crossing of two or
more races a racial mixture is created, consisting of mongrels which exhibit the most
diverse combinations of the characteristics of the crossed races, a racial mixture in
which, however, through so-called segregation, people also appear again and again who
offer the physical and mental image of one or other of the races involved in the crossing.
Most Europeans, like most people in general, are mixed breeds. They have a different
combination of characteristics than their parents, are not homozygous but heterozygous,
as the theory of heredity says, i.e. in their offspring, too, the hereditary traits that have
come together in them are split up again, do not belong together, as it were, and are not
combined into a specific racial image. But among the offspring of split-blooded
producers, pure-blooded children are possible, the cases of segregation mentioned
above. It is particularly difficult to investigate the laws of crossbreeding in humans
because most people are not the result of crosses between two parents who were each
of a pure race, but of crosses between mongrels and often mongrels of not two, but
several races. In plant and animal experiments, the ratios are easier to select and more
complex ratios can be derived from simpler ones in a way that can be tested in each
case.
When two breeds, be they plant, animal or human breeds, are crossed, the individual
hereditary traits are inherited independently of each other - unless they are linked hereditary
traits, the occurrence of which has not yet been investigated in humans. The laws of
crossbreeding - crossing of two breeds, crossing of mixed breeds (bastards) with each other,
backcrossing of a mixed breed with a purebred, etc. - were first researched by the abovementioned
Johann Mendel. His results and those of the researchers who followed him cannot
be discussed here; reference should therefore be made to the small volume by Siemens
mentioned above (p. 75) or also to the booklet by the author of the book.
50
For further instruction, see Baur-Fischer-Lenz, Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und
Rassenhy- giene (3rd ed. 1927/28).
Here - with due brevity - only a few hereditary phenomena should be mentioned, which
contribute to a better understanding of the racial facts:
The hereditary dispositions and the physical characteristics and mental traits caused by
them do not all behave in the same way during inheritance: one speaks of "covering"
(dominant) and "covering" (recessive) hereditary dispositions, terms which cannot be
discussed in more detail here. Applied to European conditions, it can be said in any case
that, for example, tall growth appears to be recessive in relation to short growth, as does
slender growth in relation to stocky growth. The dark colour of hair and eyes overlaps the
light colour, the short-headedness (the Dinaric, Eastern and Eastern Baltic or only one of
them?) overlaps the long-headedness, the narrow-facedness over the broad-facedness.
The German population therefore has a stronger predisposition to light hair and eye
colours, long heads and broad faces than might appear to be the case. Blue-eyed
children can descend from brown-eyed parents and blond children from brown-haired
parents because the light colours can be masked; for the same reason, parents with
blond hair and pure blue eyes will never have brown-haired children with brown eyes.
This phenomenon of covering and concealable hereditary traits also points to an important
distinction for racial science: the distinction between hereditary image and appearance.
Hereditary research since Weismann (1834-1914) and Mendel has shown that it is not
easy to draw conclusions from the appearance of a person, from the totality of his
characteristics, his phenotype.
- As hereditary research says, a person can draw conclusions about his or her hereditary
image (idiotype), i.e. the totality of the hereditary dispositions that this person has
inherited from his or her ancestors and that he or she will pass on to his or her
descendants. Every living being has a hereditary image that is barely accessible to
environmental influences, the sum of its inherited dispositions, not all of which must be
expressed in characteristics, some of which may exist hidden in the gametes, and this
hereditary image must be distinguished from the appearance, the sum of its perceptible
characteristics that are more or less accessible to environmental influences.
Appearance-wise, the representative of a tall breed can be inhibited in his growth, e.g. by
malnutrition: his genetic make-up remains, he will inherit the predisposition to tallness
from his offspring. In terms of appearance, heads can be remodelled by certain means;
the person concerned will only ever inherit the predisposition to the head shape that
corresponds to his genetic make-up.
It is not possible for man to bring about hereditary changes (mutations, idio-variations) in
individual hereditary strains, unless so-called loss mutations are caused by germ
damage, such as poisons, certain poisonings in industrial plants, X-rays and other
means. An increase in the physical and mental fitness of a population is only possible by
increasing the number of children of their physically and mentally fit families while
inhibiting the reproduction of the hereditarily inferior of all classes. Environmental
improvements can certainly be beneficial to the individual; they cannot improve the
hereditary constitution of a population.
It also follows from the above that living beings with the same hereditary appearance
need not be the same in appearance, and that people with the same appearance can be
different in hereditary appearance. The appearance of a person is therefore an indication
(not to be underestimated) of his racial affiliation, but not a full identification. An in-depth
racial analysis of an individual is therefore not necessary after
51
It is also possible to take ancestors, siblings and descendants into account, as these,
taken together, will provide a certain indication of the direction in which the hereditary
image of the individual under consideration may deviate from his or her appearance.
Such a deviation of the hereditary image from the physical appearance is just as possible
for the physical traits as it is for the mental traits.
Just as after a crossbreeding in the resulting crossbreeds, since the individual hereditary
traits or at least the majority of them are inherited independently of each other, e.g. the
shape of the head of one breed can be combined with the shape of the nose of another,
the hair colour of one with the eye colour of another, the body height of one with the
growth proportions (proportions) of another, etc., so, as everyday experience shows,
there are also crossbreeds which, according to their physical characteristics, belong
more to one breed, according to their mental traits, more to another. One will therefore
- Apart from the distinction between appearance and genetic make-up, we should not
expect to find in every mixed-race person the mental disposition to which his physical
characteristics seem to point, or to find in a mixed-race person exactly that mental
disposition which corresponds to the mixing ratio of the crossed races indicated by his
physical characteristics. The observation of mental racial differences therefore also
works best within peoples or tribes or even families which show as much as possible of
the physical image of a race and where a deviation of the physical disposition from the
mental image will be rarer and smaller in the individual.
Every people and every tribe is a mixture of races: mostly a few pure-blooded purebreds,
a few split-blooded hybrids from the crossing of parents of different races, but pureblooded
on both sides, but a great many split-blooded hybrids, which themselves
descend from split-breed hybrids - and such a mixture of breeds will not become a
"mixed breed" or "new breed" even if it is isolated from other peoples and in long periods
of time, unless very special selection conditions occur which can no longer be realised
today. An animal breeder can breed a new breed from two animal breeds, and in the
case of animals with rapid succession in a fairly short time, if he constantly prevents the
animals with the undesirable combination of characteristics from reproducing and only
allows the initially small minority of animals with the desired combination of
characteristics to reproduce. Such conditions, the existence of the same direction of
selection within a certain area of the earth and throughout geological periods, may have
led to the emergence of human races, as indicated above (p. 75 f.), as long as individual
groups of people were actually able to live in isolation or almost isolation in prehistoric
times with sparse human colonisation of the earth. Today, new racial formations are
hardly conceivable, but the emergence of a very diverse racial mixture, to which all races
and peoples of the earth contribute, is.
Fatherland-minded Germans have already given themselves over to the idea of a
"German race" to be formed from the racial mix of the German people. That this is
tantamount to delusion is evident from the facts of heredity cited above, but it is also due
to the impossibility of winning over an entire people to the observance of a certain
direction of selection over a long period of time. And who should determine this direction
of selection, the breeding goal, derived from the hereditary traits of all European races
represented in Germany, who should decide how many children should be born to this
German and how many to that German? - The creation of a "German race" is not a
possibility for the German future. -
Only recently has it begun to be investigated whether racial crossbreeding is beneficial or
detrimental to a group of people or to the individual human being created by racial
crossbreeding. The relative frequency of childbearing difficulties, short-sightedness
52
The fact that the European population is characterised by a certain slender, narrow
(asthenic) physique has to some extent been explained by cross-breeding, as have some
of the cases of tuberculosis and other diseases. It is not yet possible to say anything
definite, as the possibility of cross-breeding inconsistencies has only just begun to be
considered. If one considers that every cross-breeding means the refraction of two
physical and mental hereditary and appearance patterns which have developed in a long
selection process, and that thus in every hybrid the results of two differently directed
selection processes are more or less inconsistently combined, then one will consider it
quite easily possible that a "non-matching of certain hereditary dispositions in the
inheritance even in the crossing of closely related races" (Eugen Fischer) can manifest
itself in physical or mental or both diseases. According to recent research, it appears that
the activity of the glands of internal secretion (the intra-secretory glands) is very different
in the various races and that racial crosses can more or less sensitively disturb the
balance of such glands among themselves and of these glands with the body as a whole,
a balance which exists in pure-bred humans as the result of a long process of selection,
probably all the more sensitively the more distant the two crossed races are from each
other. In any case, a part of the physical ugliness which appears in Europe, as well as a
part of the moral badness and the physical and mental illnesses, can be attributed to the
mixture of the European races with each other and the rarer mixture of European with
non-European races.
6. The distribution of races across the German-speaking area
More precise information on the distribution of races within the German-speaking area is
still hard to come by today. With the exception of a few landscapes, this area of Central
Europe is one of the least studied in Europe in terms of racial studies. The following
description, based on previous partial investigations and still relying on the data of the
so-called Virchow Schoolchildren's Investigation of 1874/77, is therefore necessarily
inadequate; it should also be noted right away that it is written in a more definite tone
than the matter actually allows, since the presentation should not be burdened with
repeated expressions such as "apparently", "probably", "as one may conclude from
previous research". The individual investigations, maps etc. on which the presentation is
based cannot be listed here. Anyone travelling through the German countryside will
notice on closer inspection that the value of the following account - a thoroughly
preliminary account - is limited, but also not insignificantly small. The term "German
language area" is taken in the linguistic sense, i.e. taking into account Holland and
Flanders as areas of Low Franconian dialect, Luxembourg as an area of Moselle-
Franconian dialect, Alsace-Lorraine as areas of Franconian and Alemannic dialect,
German-speaking Switzerland of Alemannic dialect, thus not taking into account only the
German Empire and Austria with their neighbouring German-speaking areas.
North-west Germany with the northern landscapes of the Netherlands must be regarded
as the area of strongest predominance of the Nordic race. This predominance of the
Nordic race decreases quite rapidly from here towards the south-west, somewhat more
slowly towards the south and south-east and somewhat more slowly still towards the
east, finally becoming a stronger and then a weaker Nordic influence, the distinctness of
which, however, is only lost beyond the German-speaking area, for example in central to
southern France, in northern Italy, in south-eastern Europe and in Russia. South of the
Main and east of the German-Polish language border and probably also in East Prussia,
one can hardly speak of a predominance of the Nordic race, even if clearly more Nordic
tributaries reach into the larger river valleys from the Main areas. Towards the east, the
Trave-Elbe-Saale line apparently forms a border, beyond which the Nordic influence is
decidedly less than in north-west Germany.
53
land. However, the coastal fringe of the Baltic Sea can be described as predominantly
Nordic populated as far as East Prussia and probably also in East Prussia.
The same north-western part of the German-speaking area is characterised by a certain
influence of the Palatine race, apparently most clearly in Westphalian territory and in the
neighbouring Dutch regions, decreasing from these areas towards the north, east and
south, more clearly recognisable as far as northern Hesse and apparently also western
Thuringia. I would also like to assume a slight Palatine influence in Lower Silesia; Lenz
assumes a similar influence in Württemberg based on the spiritual nature of some
Swabians. Among the populations emigrating from Europe, a Palatine influence is
unmistakable among the South African peoples.
The north-east of the German-speaking area shows itself to be the German area with the
strongest influence of the East Baltic race. However, a more or less clear predominance
of this race can only be recognised in Lithuanian, Russian or Polish-speaking areas.
From the north-east, the East Baltic influence reaches as far as Central Germany and is
only lost to the west beyond the Trave-Elbe-Saale line and to the south in Bohemia and
in Bavarian Upper and Lower Franconia, where a faint East Baltic influence is still
noticeable around Nuremberg. It appears that the East Baltic influence is becoming
stronger again in Saxony and thus reaches as far as East Thuringia. The north-east of
the German language area, especially in the areas of the German-Polish language
border, then Silesia, Bohemia and, to a lesser extent, Saxony, show a certain influence
of the Sudetic race. The Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area has received influences
from the races represented in Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe through Polish and
East German immigrants. This is also shown very clearly by the blood tests.
The south-east of the German-speaking area is the area of strongest Dinaric influence
and the further south-east, the more the Dinaric race predominates. The predominance
of the Dinaric race, or at least a strong Dinaric influence, generally fades slowly towards
the north and west, for example towards the Bavarian plateau, the Allgäu and eastern to
central Switzerland; in the Engadine the strong Dinaric influence is still quite noticeable,
in the Lake Constance area of Switzerland, Austria and the German Empire the Dinaric,
Eastern and Nordic races may be represented in almost equal proportions, the Nordic
perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent. In the Hotzenwald in southern Baden and to a
lesser extent in the Wasgenwald region, however, a stronger Dinaric influence is
unmistakable. From these areas, the Dinaric influence decreases increasingly towards
the west and north, so that it seems almost imperceptible in the Main region and even in
western central Germany, and hardly extends further north, at most somewhat more
clearly into the centre of Thuringia and from Bohemia into Saxony.
54
Map I. Blue-eyed blondes (according to research by Parsons)
Parsons' maps are valuable less for their percentages and index numbers than for their
visualisation of the mutual position of the German landscapes. However, the maps are only of
limited value, the value of random samples, because Parsons carried out his research on German
prisoners of war in England, and only on soldiers and only on those who were not in the Guards
and not in special detachments. Apart from these groups, the entire upper class represented by
officers, doctors, army officials, etc., the class with the relatively strongest Nordic flavour, is
therefore missing. Nor can the number of people analysed by Parsons be described as sufficient.
Nevertheless, Parson's maps do not show any significant differences in the mutual position of the
German landscapes from the maps according to Virchow's schoolchildren's survey.
55
Map II. Brown-eyed brown-haired people (according to studies by Parsons)
56
Map III Darkness index (according to Parsons)
Parsons obtains the index of darkness (index nigrescens) by calculating the percentage of pure
blondes (blond, blue-eyed), pure browns (brown-haired, brown-eyed) and mixed (blondes with
brown eyes, browns with blue eyes) and then adding the percentage of mixed to the percentage of
pure browns multiplied by 2. He thus gives half as much weight to the mixed group, which has only
one dark feature, as to the pure dark group. This dark index is calculated because in some areas
the number of pure blondes and pure browns may have become relatively small due to extensive
mixing.
57
Map IV. Head index (according to studies by Parsons)
East Prussia, especially the district of Gumbinnen, then also the Silesian district of
Hirschberg (municipality of Zillertal), and to a lesser extent some parts of Hanover,
experienced a Dinaric influence through Salzburgers and Zillertalers who had been
expelled from their Austrian homeland because of their Protestant faith. Such expellees
have also settled in other places in the German-speaking area, where, in addition to the
Austrian names, a certain Dinaric flavour is still noticeable in areas otherwise free of such
influences.
The south-west of the German language area, as well as German-speaking Switzerland
except for its easternmost areas and the areas of the German-French language border in
northern Alsace, Lorraine and Belgium, together with Altenburg and the more
mountainous parts of Saxony, as well as Upper Silesia and the areas of the German-
Czech language border in Silesia, are probably the German landscapes with the strongest
influence of the Eastern race. Within these landscapes, there is also a predominance of
the Eastern race here and there, especially in the mountains, for example in Switzerland,
with the exception of the areas around the Aare, Limmat and Reuss valleys, which are
characterised by stronger Nordic influences, in the Black Forest, especially its more
northern parts, in the Franconian Jura, the Bavarian Forest and the Bohemian Forest and
their neighbouring areas, less clearly in the Rauhe Alb, more clearly in northern Alsace
and in Lorraine, furthermore - now already on central German soil - in Luxembourg, in
the Eifel and the Ardennes. From there, a strong eastern influence still extends over the
whole of Walloon Belgium, as far as the Walloon-Flemish language border, which is
almost the only ethnic border that is also a racial mix border: south of it predominantly
eastern or eastern-nordic-western areas, north of it predominantly northern or at least
northern-eastern-Faelic-western areas.
58
Map V. Distribution of "browns" in Central Europe
According to the so-called Virchow schoolchildren's examination, which was carried out in 1874-77
in the countries indicated by the map and covered 10 million schoolchildren in the German Empire.
The following were to be included in the lists as "blondes": Children with light skin, blond hair and
blue eyes; as "brown": children with dark skin, brown or black hair and brown eyes. There were
31.8% of "blondes" in the German Empire, 19.7% in Austria and 11.1% in Switzerland; 14.05% of
"browns" in the German Empire, 23.17% in Austria and 25.7% in Switzerland. The Italian army
survey in 1898 found 66.3% in Italy, the Swedish army survey in 1926 found 0.9% "browns" in
Sweden. The light colours may indicate Nordic, Faelic and East Baltic hereditary traits, the dark
colours indicate hereditary traits of the dark European races, as well as the slight influence of non-
European races. As light-coloured children with grey eyes were not included, the data from
Virchow's schoolchildren's examination of the light colours point more to the Nordic and Faelic
than the East Baltic influence.
The western influences in the German-speaking area have already been mentioned in
part above (pp. 61/62). Such influences, but nowhere a predominance of the Western
race, are more noticeable in the Eastern Alps, in the racial mixture of Vienna, in
Switzerland, apparently especially in its south-eastern, southern and western areas and
thus in the German-speaking landscapes neighbouring these areas. Western influences
can be recognised in Alsace, apparently above all in its north-western parts, then in
Lorraine, in the Rhine Palatinate, in the regions of the Moselle and the middle course of
the Rhine, especially in the Rheingau, finally also in Flanders, which, like the Rhineland,
probably appears somewhat more narrow-faced and long-headed than one would expect
from the maps of skin, hair and eye colours and from the probability of a
59
would be expected to have a slight Faelic influence. One must assume the impact of a
long-headed, narrow-faced dark race, and the appearance confirms such an assumption.
Within the landscapes of central Germany and the south of the German-speaking area
under consideration, there are a larger number of "lighter" areas, i.e. areas within which
there are more light-skinned, blond and blue-eyed people than in the surrounding areas.
In the west and south of the German-speaking area, this "lightness" is mainly attributable to
the Nordic race, with a slight Palatine influence; in the south-east of the Germanspeaking
area, it is mainly attributable to the Nordic race, with a certain East Baltic
influence and a very slight Palatine influence. A closer examination of such "lighter"
areas in detail must be omitted here.
The Wendish (Sorbian) language area, today in Prussia and Saxony roughly comprising
the quadrangle with the diagonals Löbau-Lübbenau and Bischofswerda-Pinnow,
apparently differs little or not at all from its German-speaking surroundings in terms of the
racial mix of its population. In Spreewalde, I would like to assume a clear predominance
of the Eastern and Eastern Baltic races.
In terms of the composition of their racial mixture, the Masurians of East Prussia are much
closer to the entirety of the German-speaking East Prussians than to the entirety of the
Poles, to whom they are linguistically related. Like the East Prussians, they can be
regarded as perhaps still predominantly Nordic, or at least in the main as a Nordic-
Eastern Baltic-Eastern Sudeten racial mixture.
If one attempts to estimate the total genetic make-up of the European German-speaking
population - an attempt that has no real scientific value given the lack of racial research
into this population - one can distribute it roughly as follows: The Nordic race may make
up about 45-50% of the German blues, the Eastern influence 20%, the Dinaric 15%, the
Eastern Baltic 8%, the Faelic 5%, the Western 2%, a Sudeten and Inner Asian influence
together about 2%.
Purely Nordic Germans may make up about 6-8% of the German population, purely
Eastern Germans about 2-3%, also purely Dinaric Germans about 2-3%. One has the
impression that the non-Nordic races were interbred much earlier and more thoroughly
than the Nordic races, as if a certain core of pure or strongly predominantly Nordic races
had existed since prehistoric times, perhaps until the 19th century.
The tribal differences within the German-speaking population are mainly differences in
the composition of the individual racial mixtures, as which - from a racial point of view - the
tribes present themselves. The proportion of races represented in the total population
changes from tribe to tribe. In addition, there are acquired, non-hereditary traits, overimprints
of appearance, such as dialect and custom can bring about, especially in the
facial expression and in the movements of the limbs. Furthermore, temporary
accumulations of certain cross-breeding combinations, possibly corresponding to certain
selection ratios acting in the same direction for a certain period of time, may cause these
traits to appear more concentrated in one tribe and those in another. In earlier centuries,
before the introduction of general freedom of movement, individual tribes may have
travelled a few steps along the very long road by which a racial mixture would eventually
have to become a new race (cf. p. 81). With the freedom of movement of our time, such
beginnings of a relatively greater hereditary equality or at least less hereditary difference
within a tribe are no longer possible.
60
In all European populations with a noticeable Nordic racial influence, there is more
Nordic inheritance among the males than among the females. It can often be observed
that within a mixed-race family with a Nordic influence, the daughters follow more of the
non-Nordic race and the sons more of the Nordic race. This has to do with so-called sexlinked
hereditary traits. There are studies that confirm this for the Nordic race within such
racial groups. After looking at populations with a strong Dinaric influence, I would like to
assume that in Dinaric-Eastern racial crosses there are more Dinaric hereditary traits in
the male part of the population and more Eastern hereditary traits in the female part.
Within all European peoples, the racial composition of the individual ethnic strata is
different. There is therefore not only a racial distribution in the horizontal of the area of
the earth concerned, but also in the vertical of the strata of the people concerned. It must
be assumed that within almost every people or tribe in all parts of the world the leading
strata are racially differently composed than the leading strata. In some cases the leading
and the led strata are approximately two different races, in most cases they are two
groups within which the same races are represented, but in different proportions. In the
case of Western peoples, the upper classes contain on average more Nordic, Faelic and
Dinaric blood, while the lower classes contain more Eastern and Eastern Baltic blood.
That's why the journals depict the representative of the upper classes with different
characteristics than the representative of the lower classes or the upstart. There are
enough predominantly Nordic people who have risen within the social classes, but such a
rise need not generally appear ridiculous to the illustrators or the predominantly Nordic
person in question need not appear disturbing or adverse to them within the higher
classes, for they probably never draw an upstart as a Nordic person, but they do express
nobility, a "proletarian" or in the upper classes unusual and conspicuous appearance
through stocky figures, round heads with bull necks, broad faces with heavy double
chins, blunt or upturned noses, short fingers and a series of decidedly unnordic features.
Accordingly, the relatively stronger penetration of the Western upper classes with Nordic
blood is also an experience of the layman, even if he does not express such an
experience with racial terms.
In my "Nobility and Race" (2nd ed. 1928), I have analysed the overlapping of the Nordic
race over the non-Nordic races within the Occidental peoples, an overlapping which has
taken place within all peoples of Indo-Germanic language, and which last took place in
the Occident during the Migration Period. If today's upper classes of Western peoples are
on average even richer in Nordic blood than the lower classes, this is only to a lesser
extent due to the spread of the predominantly Nordic Germanic tribes of the Migration
Period over large non-Nordic populated areas of Europe and the subsequent formation of
ethnic classes, but largely due to the social advancement of predominantly Nordic
people, caused by the mental characteristics of the Nordic race. Through the middle
class of the peoples with a stronger Nordic influence, i.e. above all the peoples of the
Germanic language, a stream of strong-willed, thoughtful families, capable of judgement,
creative on a small or large scale, and rich in Nordic blood above average, constantly
rises and reaches the upper class in the course of a few generations, which is formed
again and again by this rising stream, since most of their generations always wipe
themselves out through insufficient reproduction. The upper class of the German
population, which is also on average richer in Nordic blood, is therefore not so much a
class in traditional existence, but a class in permanent development, and a relatively
stronger Nordic influence would only characterise it until all the ascendant and
predominantly Nordic hereditary lines of the German population had reached the upper
class and its poverty of children.
61
The unmistakable influences of the Near Eastern and Oriental races within the propertied
and leading classes of the Occident are due to intermarriages with Jews or Jewesses,
which are much more frequent in these classes than in the lower classes. Those
influential circles in Europe which are represented by the Jewish people, circles within
which the races described in more detail on pp. 51 ff. are to be found, belong, for the
purposes of racial studies, to the racial studies of the Jewish people and are therefore
dealt with in my book thus named.
Here and there on German soil, connections with Gypsies in a village or an area have
brought about slight influences of the races represented in the Gypsies mentioned on p.
51 ff. Cross-breeding with representatives of non-European races has already been
mentioned on p. 47 ff. Today they probably occur above all in the larger harbour cities
where ships of non-European countries or ships with stokers of non-European racial
origin dock. The appearance of Negroes in the amusement parlours of large cities should
also be remembered in this context.
Map VI after Bernhard Struck. (1 : 50 000 000)
62
Map VII after Bernhard Struck. (1 : 50 000 000)
63
Map VIII after Bernhard Struck. (1 : 50 000 000)
64
Map IX after Bernhard Struck. (1 : 50 000 000)
65
Dinaric
Eastern
Near East. p Negro marriage "
The dotted line delimits the area of the strongest predominantly of a type of raese that
has so far been insufficiently described and mostly called "pRjäsantypus".
Map X. Illustration of the areas of presumably strongest predominance of individual breeds
Wesüsfie , /\( Oriental Ethiopian
66
Kraitschek, Rassenkunde, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des deutschen Volkes
(1924), and Günther, Rassenkunde Europas (3rd ed. 1929) deal with the distribution of
the European races across the territory of Europe.
Four racial maps according to Struck are reproduced here, together with a map of the
areas of presumably strongest predominance of the races dealt with in this book and in
the "Rassenkunde Europas". Four racial maps of the earth (body height, head index, skin
colour and hair shape) according to Struck can be found in the "Rassenkunde Europas".
For the races of the earth, see Fischer, Spezielle Anthropologie, Rassenlehre (im Bande
"Anthropologie", Kultur der Gegenwart, Teil III, Abt. V (1923)); Haddon, The Races of
Man (1924), Fleure, The Races of Mankind (1928) and v. Eickstedt, Rassenkunde und
Rassengeschichte der Menschheit (1933). - Deniker, Les Races et les Peuples de la Terre,
2nd ed. 1926, is outdated in many respects.
7. The races of Europe in prehistory and history
The prehistoric human races that colonised Europe in the Palaeolithic period cannot be
discussed in detail here. We will only briefly touch on the Palaeolithic evidence of the
colonisation of Europe that has or suggests any connection with the European races of
today.
The Nordic and Western races, and with them the Oriental race, together with the
Ethiopian (Hamitic) race, which is still found today in north-east Africa in a less hybridised
form and in greater numbers, form a group of slender, long-headed, narrow-faced,
narrow-nosed, soft-haired races, at the same time a group of races, within whose
prehistoric to historical spread only languages with one grammatical gender have
appeared, so that one is always tempted to assume a common ancestral race for these
races and to search for their temporal and local occurrence. At least since the 3rd edition
of my "Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes" (1923) I have expressed such a conjecture.
The above-mentioned slender, long-headed, narrow-faced breeds would have to have
developed from such a common ancestral race in different areas of the earth, which were
closed off for long periods of time, through various selection processes. The common
root of these races, however, would have to be placed in a time that predates almost all
of the Palaeolithic human remains in Asia and Europe that have been found to date and
that can be interpreted in a more definite way, and to which even this assumption would
hardly venture.
The "original homeland" of the Western race, i . e. the area in which it achieved its
characteristic traits in a certain degree of isolation through selection, I would look for in
western or south-western Europe, the original homeland of the Ethiopian (Hamitic) race -
according to some researchers - in the areas around the Persian Gulf and that of the Oriental
race - also according to already expressed assumptions - in south-eastern Europe. Eugen
Fischer assumes that the Ethiopian (Hamitic) race originated from an Oriental-Negroid racial
mixture. I have categorised both the Oriental and Ethiopian (Hamitic) races according to
origin and physical and mental traits in the
"Rassenkunde des jüdischen Volkes" (2nd ed. 1930). The Semitic languages were
spread by the Oriental race or tribes of predominantly Oriental race, the Hamitic
languages by tribes of Ethiopian (Hamitic) race. Today, both language tribes include
peoples who have only little oriental or Ethiopian (Hamitic) blood. The original languages
of the western and southern European populations of predominantly western race have
disappeared; the majority of these populations have adopted Indo-European languages.
The "original home" of the Nordic race is to be sought in the ice-free areas of Palaeolithic
Central Europe; there the Nordic race in its present form must have been formed by
67
The Chancelade race or the group of people from which it originated appears to be the
so-called Chancelade race. Their ancestral race, or the group of people from which they
originated, appears to be the so-called Chancelade race, or a racial mixture in which the
Chancelade race, perhaps a variety of the Cromagnon race, was strongly represented.
Reche described the Chancelade breed as the ancestral breed of the Nordic breed; I
have expressed the assumption that the Brünn (Aurignac) breed also contributed
hereditary traits to the formation of the Nordic breed. Reche's assumption - derivation of
the Nordic race from the Chancelade form - has particularly important support from skull
finds from Lake Pritzerber See (Prov. Brandenburg), finds from the time of the transition
from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, which are very close to both the Chancelade form
and the skull form of the Nordic race, and the finds from Lake Pritzerber See are
connected to roughly contemporaneous finds, namely a skull that was excavated near
Oberhausen in the Rhineland and one that was excavated near Hochlarmarck in
Recklinghausen-Süd, just as these and the Pritzerber skulls also closely follow finds of
frontal bones that were excavated in Ellerbeck near Kiel. Central and north-west
Germany in particular, and probably parts of Bohemia, may represent the Palaeolithic to
Neolithic area from which the Nordic race, which emerged in Central Europe through
selection over the course of the Palaeolithic millennia, gradually spread and thus also
towards the northwards receding ice. During these millennia of the Late Ice Age, the
human group of Central Europe that became the Nordic race also seems to have
undergone the selection process that caused the lightening or depigmentation of skin,
hair and eye colours that characterises the Nordic race according to the earliest
descriptions of its appearance and the way it looks today. It must be assumed that the
light-coloured human races are descended from darker ancestral races.
Central Germany, in particular, appears to be a prehistoric social group with a special
character, characterised by a Nordic or at least very predominantly Nordic population and
further characterised by powerful, already Neolithic expansions, which certainly appear to
be conquests of a master race. After a number of important linguists - above all Hermann
Hirt - have argued for linguistic reasons in favour of a Central to Northern European
original home of those prehistoric and historical tribes who spoke the Indo-European
languages (including Indian, Persian, Armenian, the Slavic languages, Greek, the Italic
languages, including Latin, Celtic and Germanic languages), the assumption that the
Indo-European languages are a creation of the Nordic race or - in other words - that the
peoples of Indo-Germanic languages were originally predominantly Nordic has received
powerful support, if not confirmation.
Schuchhardt - whose work "Alteuropa. Eine Vorgeschichte unseres Erdteils" (2nd ed.
1926) should be mentioned here in addition to the works of Kossinna - has recently
described Thuringia as the innermost original homeland of the Indo-Europeans, i.e. the
tribes of predominantly Nordic race that spread the Indo-European languages. From the
area of the Saxon-Thuringian Corded Ware of the Neolithic period, migrations of peoples
can indeed be traced, each of which seems to have provided the impetus for the
emergence of a people of Indo-European language. The core of a people of Indo-
European language seems to have been formed by a group of Corded Ware people.
However, the Corded Ware people are definitely Nordic by race. On the other hand, it
can be shown that every people of Indo-European language had a master class of
predominantly Nordic race. Corded Ware conquerors must have contributed significantly
to the formation of these master classes. It is true that during the period of the Corded
Ware expansions the Nordic race - here predominantly and there as a more or less
strong influence - was already widespread far outside the area of the Saxon-Thuringian
Corded Ware people, as was also the case with the Danubian Linear Pottery and the
north-west European Megalithic Pottery. The skull from Stångenäs in Bohuslän, Sweden,
which belongs to the period around 6000 BC, shows
68
already purely or almost purely Nordic forms. But the spread of Indo-European
languages can, according to the evidence of prehistoric movements of peoples, only
have come from the Corded Ware people, the most Nordic group within the Neolithic
population of Europe, and at the same time the most daring and warlike group in
Neolithic Old Europe.
Even the Jutlandic "battle-axe people" or "single grave people", of whom no skeletal
remains have yet been found, have been deduced by some prehistorians (Sophus
Müller, Schwantes) from one of the first forays of the Corded Ware people. It is clear that
there was a powerful invasion of Corded Ware people towards the end of the Neolithic
and the beginning of the Bronze Age, which penetrated northern Germany, Denmark and
southern Sweden, i.e. the territories of the megalithic ceramists, who were of Faelic-
Nordic race: an intrusion which must be interpreted as the Indo-Germanisation and - from
a racial point of view - further Northernisation of north-western Europe (if, like Sophus
Müller and Nerman, one does not want to attribute the Indo-Germanisation of this area
already to the Jutlandic battle-axe people), an intrusion in any case from which the
emergence of Germanicism in the Bronze Age can be explained.
An advance of the Corded Ware people to the north-east, into the eastern Baltic Sea
countries, must have provided the impetus for the formation of the Baltic group of Indo-
Europeans (Lithuanians, Latvians). A further advance towards central Russia contributed
to the formation of the Slavic group of Indo-Europeans. Corded Ware people, who had
migrated from eastern Germany via Silesia and Galicia to southern Russia, became the
core of the Indo-Iranians (Indians, Medes, Persians and relatives) who formed there and
on the lower Danube, and of the Saka, who were rich in individual tribes, including the
Scythians. Several Corded Ware advances into the sub-areas of the Danubian Linear
Pottery contributed to the formation of individual Indo-European peoples such as the
Thracians, Phrygians, Hellenes and their closest relatives, including the Proto-Philistines.
Celticism can be explained by a Corded Ware advance that travelled up the Saale and
Elbe rivers and across Bohemia into the Danube region. Italicism (including the Romanity
of the Latin-Faliscan Italic group) can be explained by a Corded Ware advance, which
was directed via Eisenach and Frankfurt a. M., via the Main and Rhine regions into the
Alpine foothills.
The emergence of individual Indo-European peoples and thus a core of the Nordic race,
which can b e recognised in all these peoples, could thus be explained in each case by
conquests of Corded Ware peoples that have already been or are still to be elucidated, or in
any case can be assumed. Here - in the interests of brevity - only those of these movements
of peoples that have become important for the emergence and racial composition of
Germanic peoples will be considered in more detail.
On north-west German soil, tribes of Nordic race or predominantly Nordic race advancing
from central Europe towards the west and north-west, the core of which were the socalled
Corded Ware people, who later stood out so clearly, must have come into contact
with a population, whose racial characteristics and morals characterised them as
descendants of the Palaeolithic population of Western Europe, descendants of the
Cromagnon race - so named after one of the first southern French sites where bones of
this very tall, long to medium-skinned, broad- (or low) skinned race were found. (or low)
faceted breed.
The Cromagnon race, or at least a part of the Cromagnon race, must have undergone
the lightening or discolouration (depigmentation) of skin, hair and eye colours in the late
Ice Age millennia and in areas near the northward receding ice edge, which
characterises the Faelic race - the part of the Palaeolithic Cromagnon race that still exists
today. However, the Norwegian race researcher Bryn has found a Cromagnon-like race
of people with dark colours in Norway (in Tydal), a dark variety of the Faelic race, so to
speak.
69
breed. The selection process which brought about the lightening of the Cromagnon race
may already have been completed in the period when in north-west Europe -
approximately in the area between the mouth of the Rhine and the Baltic Sea? - the
Nordic race clashed with the Palaeolithic race - I would like to refer to the Neolithic,
probably lightened descendants of the Palaeolithic Cromagnon race as the Palaeolithic
race again in the following description. I assume that repeated clashes between
individual groups of the two races, first warlike conflicts, then more peaceful mixtures on
a more or less "equal" basis, have taken place since around 8000 BC at the latest.
The event may have been impressive in each case and lingered on in legends: Lenz
would like to assume that the Germanic legends of the battle of the gods against the
Russians are the memory of the clash between the very tall, massive Faelic and the tall,
bold Norse; the black-haired, cunning dwarves of the Germanic legends are probably a
memory of the first encounter with parts of the Near Eastern race. Is it not more obvious
to interpret the dwarves as the Eastern race that slowly seeped into Central Europe in
the Neolithic Age?
Certain traces of a mother-tongue influence and the breaking through of the tens system
(decimal system) by a twentieth system (vigesimal system), which can be seen within the
Celtic and Germanic cultures, may point to the Nordic-Faelic clash. From the northwestern
group of the "Indo-Germanic primitive people", i.e. the Central European group
of people of predominantly Nordic race, which formed the Indo-Germanic languages
within itself, i.e. precisely from that group which had to receive a certain Faelic influence,
the Celts and Germanic peoples later emerged, as well as their closest neighbours, the
Italics, whose main tribe, the Latin-Faliscans, later founded the Roman Empire in Italy.
Some researchers have attributed the origin of the so-called First (Germanic) Sound Shift
to the Nordic-Faelic clash. The people of the Faelic race would have given up their
language in favour of the Indo-European language from which Germanic was to be
formed, but their way of speaking would have influenced this language in such a way that
a sound shift occurred for the language of the Nordic-Faelic people as a whole. For
reasons which I have given in the section "Race and Language" of my "Rassenkunde
des deutschen Volkes" (17th ed. 1933), I am unable to share this explanation of the First
Sound Shift.
Some researchers have sought to derive the Nordic breed from the Cromagnon breed,
which would require the assumption of such a profound process of remodelling that it
would be difficult to specify the precise selection conditions under which this remodelling
process would have taken place. Such researchers explain the Cromagnon-like forms
that still exist today, i.e. the Faelian breed, by the continued existence of a part of the old
Cromagnon breed that has not yet or only slightly been affected by the remodelling or rebreeding.
Paudler and Kern have tried to explain the Nordic breed by mixing a slender,
long-headed, narrow-faced breed with the Cromagnon breed, whereby the Nordic breed
resulting from this mixture of breeds would have derived some of its characteristics from
the Cromagnon breed. Such an assumption cannot be reconciled with the laws of
inheritance, according to which the individual hereditary traits are inherited independently
of each other when two breeds are crossed (cf. p. 76 f. and 80 f.). It is inadmissible to
compose the image of a race, as it were, from the characteristics of two or more races,
for it is impossible to conceive of selective relationships which would have favoured only
this imaginary composition in reproduction over and over again and for long periods of
time and would have inhibited all other possible combinations, especially not within the
relatively short period of time since the collision of the Nordic and the Faelic races.
70
I have analysed the prehistoric fate of the Western race and the Western and Southern
European populations of predominantly Western race mainly in the
"Racial history of Europe". They have had far-reaching consequences for the
development of pan-European moral relations, since certain spiritual impulses,
recognisable as early as the Neolithic Age, have always emanated from areas of
predominantly western race, impulses whose characteristics I have also tried to
characterise in "Race and Style" (2nd ed. 1928). This race plays a minor role in the racial
colonisation of the present-day German-speaking area in prehistoric and historical times.
It must be assumed that the German areas which today have a slight western flavour
were for the most part already settled in prehistoric times. Names of peoples cannot be
linked to these colonisations, nor can prehistoric research link them to more clearly
defined migrations of civilisation. The rule of the Romans in southern and western
Germany may have had a certain strengthening effect on the western influence, and later
the advance of French armies, especially during the French Revolution and Napoleon's
reign. Huguenot immigrants brought with them a certain western flavour, as can be seen
in the physical and mental traits of their descendants and the present-day inhabitants of
individual Huguenot settlements (e.g. in the Odenwald). However, many Huguenot
families appear to have been predominantly Nordic (cf. "Rassenkunde Europas").
The prehistoric immigration of the Eastern race is difficult to elucidate, since the Eastern
race must have abandoned its original forms of tools and vessels, perhaps after contact
with southern and central European populations of the Western and Dinaric races. Most
researchers who have spoken out about the probable origin of the Eastern race regard it
as part of the widespread group of people who became the Inner Asian (Mongolian) race
in Inner Asia, i.e. as the "Mongolians" who penetrated furthest westwards, and
accordingly assume that the Eastern race or its ancestral form migrated from Asia. The
finds do not contradict this, although an actual spread of the stocky broad-faced short
heads, which seems to have taken place in the period of transition from the Palaeolithic
to the Neolithic, can only be traced from the Alpine region, namely to the west and north,
approximately to the areas of today's German-French language border, a spread which,
because of its quiet, unwarlike nature and because it does not correspond to a migration
of a certain style of vessel and tool, is called infiltration (Lapouge: invasion intersti- tielle,
Ripley: infiltration). Like their species-specific style, these Eastern populations
abandoned their languages, probably changing them several times in favour of
conquering Dinaric and mainly Nordic tribes, in Central Europe finally in favour of the
Celtic and finally the Germa- nic languages. Perhaps the Eastern race, like the Dinaric
race, introduced certain domestic animal breeds to Central Europe.
The prehistoric immigration of the Dinaric race can only be traced back to the late Stone
Age. It has been assumed that the Dinaric race originated in the Near East. During the
transition from the Stone Age to the Metal Age, a population that probably had a Dinaric
influence, presumably a predominantly Dinaric master class, advanced from northern
France across central Germany. This population already used copper to make weapons
and carried the so-called bell beaker with them, a particular type of vessel of western
European, probably Spanish, origin. In the Early Bronze Age, a predominantly Dinaric
population must have colonised certain areas in western central Germany. Dinaric skulls
from this period were found on the Adlerberg near Worms. At the same time, parts of
Bavaria and the Swabian Alb may have been populated by an eastern Dinaric
population. During the Hallstatt period, the Dinaric race may have advanced from the
eastern Alps towards Bohemia and southern Germany in new waves.
71
There is no evidence of a Neolithic or Bronze Age style peculiar to the Dinaric race. The
Bell Beaker, which spread in areas of Central Europe mainly through migrations of
predominantly Dinaric populations, originates from a Western and Southern European
civilisation of Western race. The languages originally spoken by the Dinaric race are
similar to the Caucasian (Alarodic) languages. The majority of the predominantly Dinaric
population later switched to Indo-Germanic languages, in the Bronze Age mainly to
Celtic, and later to Germanic and Slavic languages. Certain words, which are common to
all present-day Alpine languages, regardless of their linguistic origin, could have been
taken from the extinct languages of the Dinaric and Eastern races.
The prehistoric appearance of the East Baltic race is still very little studied. Their original
homeland, to put it more precisely: The area in which it developed in isolation through
selection as a special hereditary group of people with a special form of language, the
area in which it must have undergone a lightening (depigmentation) similar to that of the
Faelic and Nordic races, will be sought between Moscow and the Urals or between
Kazan and the Urals, where, for linguistic reasons, the Finno-Ugric linguistics (Szinnyei,
Wiklund) would also like to place the original seats of the peoples of the Finno-Ugric
language. At the time when this area or parts of it were not yet ice-free, the group of
people forming the East Baltic race may have settled further to the south-east; after all,
the East Baltic race, like the Eastern Baltic race, is best understood as a re-bred part of
the large group of people that developed into the Inner Asian (Mongolian) race in Inner
Asia. Eastern Baltic tribes only seem to have reached the Baltic Sea countries in the
Bronze Age.
The most momentous event for the racial history of the Eastern European tribes of Finno-
Ugric language was their collision with the group of predominantly Nordic races that
developed the Slavic languages within the Indo-European language tribe furthest to the
east, the Proto-Slavs: most Finno-Ugric tribes became the lower class of Slavic tribes
and adopted the Slavic language of their master class. The Finns and the Madjars
retained their Finno-Ugric language, but changed racially: the Finns by absorbing quite a
lot of Nordic blood, the Madjars by absorbing so much Eastern, Dinaric, Nordic, Western
and Near Eastern blood that the Eastern Baltic component of Madjarism has become
quite indistinct in many Madjar areas today. For the racial history of the German people,
the East Baltic race has only become more important than the underclass of Slavic tribes
who, during their advance in the early Middle Ages, thinly colonised what was formerly
East Germanic and is now German soil up to a line shown on Map V, p. 89. However, in
the south of the area indicated by this border, roughly south or south-east of the area of
present-day Nuremberg, the lower class of Slavic tribes must have been less
predominantly East Baltic than East Dinaric. As the Germans advanced from the 12th
century onwards, the predominantly northern Slavic ruling class was killed or pushed
eastwards, while the remaining part of the Slavic underclass - predominantly East Baltic
in the north of the Slavic-Germanic border region and predominantly East Dinaric in the
south - converted to the German language and German ethnicity over the following
centuries. Through their descendants, this former Slavic underclass makes up the
majority of today's East Baltic German population in northern Germany and east-central
Germany.
Above (p. 102 ff.) we have spoken of tribes of predominantly Nordic race, which spread
the dialects of the Indo-European original language developed within the Nordic race
from Central Europe over subjugated non-Nordic populations. It has been emphasised
that Corded Ware conquerors formed the core of these tribes. Over the centuries, the
dialects of the Indo-European original language have developed into the individual Indo-
European languages.
72
The separation of the individual Indo-European languages from each other, and the
development of ever greater differences between them, was apparently caused by 1. the
different fortunes of the individual Indo-European language tribes in what were ultimately
very different landscapes in Europe and Asia, 2. the influence of the linguistic spirit of the
individual non-Nordic lower classes who had converted to Indo-Germanic languages.
From the western border of the Chinese empire, where the predominantly Nordic
Tocharians lived - whose Indo-European language remains were found in the Turfan
oasis in 1903/07 together with wall paintings depicting blond, light-eyed people and from
India
Map XI: The original seats of the main peoples of Indo-European languages
as revealed by linguistics and prehistoric research (after Wilke)
in the east to Ireland and Iceland in the west, Indo-European languages have become
dominant. I have analysed the individual waves of peoples of Nordic racial origin, which
they have spread, according to their racial history in the "Racial History of Europe". I
have dealt with two of these waves of peoples and the moral creations that followed them
in more detail in "Rassengeschichte des hellenischen und des römischen Volkes" (1928).
With these descriptions I have attempted to show that the respective mostly pre-historical
foundations of peoples, which emerged from the overlapping of mostly mother-right and,
so to speak, history-less living non-Nordic populations by predominantly Nordic tribes of
Indo-European language, are followed by the significant creations of morals of the
individual peoples of Indo-European language, creations of morals characterised by an
"antiquity" and "middle age" in which the Nordic spirit of the individual ethnic upper
classes was built up.
73
The "late period", which finally leads to the "downfall" of the morals (culture) concerned
and usually also of the state power of these peoples of Indo-European language, then
breaks in according to a spreading de-normalisation, i.e. eradication of the
predominantly Nordic advantage, and degeneration, i.e. increase of inferior
hereditary dispositions within all races represented in the people concerned.
In the face of a Spengler who - like the Hellene Polybios, the Romans Varro and Publius
Annius Florus and the Italian philosopher Vico (1688-1744) - believes in a "law" of
flourishing and dying, of youth, maturity and ageing of peoples or rather In the
"Rassenkunde Europas" I had to explain that just as every blossoming of a civilisation on
the whole earth is apparently the effect of the overlapping of two or more races, so also
the "ageing", the "decay" of a civilisation (culture) is nothing other than the effect of a
counter-selection of the creative racial layer of a people. At the very least, every "decline"
of a people of Indo-European language and its morals was initiated or accompanied by
the extinction of the Nordic race within the racial mixture in question.
We cannot dwell here on individual phenomena of such processes. Two of these Nordic
waves of peoples have become important for the racial history of the German people, the
Celtic and the Germanic, and later, to a certain extent, the Slavic wave of peoples. The
Celts must have exercised a certain dominance in Central Europe in the period between
900 and 200 BC, which may have been most noticeable for their neighbouring tribes
around 500-400 BC. Schuchhardt would like to attribute to the Celts in their Neolithic
homeland in the Danube region, southern Germany, Moravia and Bohemia (cf. p. 104)
the pottery style of the so-called Linear Pottery. Part of the Linear Pottery area and
certain forms of Linear Pottery can certainly also be attributed to the Celts, and linguistics
also places the original Celtic settlements in roughly the same area. Particular forms of
Linear Pottery, the Hinkelstein pottery and the Spiral pottery, were spread in the Neolithic
period, the one from Bohemia through Saxony and Thuringia, the other from southern
Germany down the Rhine. It was the Celtic expansion that linguists have also
recognised, an expansion as far as the Celtic-Germanic border that runs from the
Lüneburg Heath via Hildesheim, Göttingen and Eisenach towards the Thuringian Forest.
From the Upper and Middle Rhine regions, the Celts advanced westwards to Gaul, as
today's France was then named after a Celtic tribe. In the Hallstatt period, Celtic tribes
colonised large areas of France and advanced from there to Spain around 600 BC. Celtic
tribes seem to have occupied parts of the British Isles since 800 BC; new Celtic tribes
began to arrive there around 600 BC. This was followed by the Celtic advances into
northern Italy, around 400 BC, the shattering of the allied Etruscan states by Gallic
armies, in 390 BC their occupation of Rome, and in the following years the battles
between Romans and Gauls in northern Italy. Celtic tribes advanced down the Danube to
Styria, Carinthia, Veneto, Hungary and finally to the Balkan Peninsula around 280 BC. In
eastern Phrygia, Celtic tribes established the kingdom of the Galatians, which only
became a Roman province in 15 BC.
In all these conquered territories, the Celts gradually became racially mixed. The ancient
Celts must be thought of as a predominantly Nordic people. Even the Celts of the 5th
century BC, at least the Celts of the Gallic tribe, appear almost entirely Nordic according
to grave finds, although it should be borne in mind that the grave finds of this period only
bear witness to the carefully buried upper classes of the peoples. The lower classes of
the Celts in Europe must be thought of as the eastern, Dinaric and western races; the
Celts in Belgium and the Lower Rhine area probably also had an upper class of the more
or less
74
This is to be assumed for the entire Neolithic area of megalithic pottery in north-west
Europe and its neighbouring regions.
Internal disputes between the noble dynasties may have shaken the entire Celtic
civilisation of Central and Western Europe and wiped out many of its Nordic dynasties.
From 400 BC onwards, Celtic power declined and the Celtic currency eventually
disintegrated. The Romans still describe the Celts as predominantly Nordic people, but
not as predominantly Nordic as the Germanic tribes. Since the later Iron Age, short skulls
have been found in abundance in Celtic graves. The Gauls who were supposed to
represent captured Germanic tribes in a triumphal procession of the Roman emperor
Caligula (37-40 AD) had to dye their hair blonde, so they were already dark-haired
representatives of their tribes - as testimonies from the Roman historians Strabon and
Diodorus Siculus show - who were otherwise not lacking in blond hair.
As the Germanic tribes advanced slowly from around 700 BC, then more rapidly from
around 600 BC, from what is now north-west Germany towards the south and west,
displacing Celtic populations in the process, free Celtic families of predominantly Nordic
race may have been wiped out again, while the Celtic servant class, which was probably
not numerous in these areas and was predominantly of non-Nordic race, changed
masters and merged into the Germanic servant class. Such processes must have been
repeated on a larger scale in the last centuries BC, when the growing power of Germanic
tribes drove the Celts out of western central Germany, then after 100 BC out of the areas
between the Main and Danube rivers, and in the first century AD, when the Celts were
driven out of the Palatinate and Alsace, Bohemia and Moravia by the Germanic tribes
pushing in behind them.
It is therefore wrong to describe the pure and mixed parts of the Eastern race found
today in France or Germany as descendants of the Celts or even as a "Celtic race", as
one can still occasionally hear today. Long before the Celts had spread across Central
and Western Europe, Central and Western European areas had already been colonised
by populations of predominantly Eastern race, also by populations of predominantly
Dinaric race, areas which, with the expansion of the Celts, received an originally more
numerous master class of predominantly Northern race, which then dwindled due to
external struggles and internal disputes. Although the Celtic-speaking populations that
came under the rule of the predominantly Nordic Germanic tribes may have been
predominantly Eastern in some areas, these were populations that had already lost their
predominantly Nordic ruling class through extermination, especially as this ruling class or
its remnants had confronted the advancing Germanic tribes in battle. A large part of the
Celts fighting against the Germanic tribes consisted only of "linguistic Celts", as they
were called, i.e. no longer Celts by blood, no longer the physical descendants of the
predominantly Nordic original Celts.
The de-normalisation of the Celtic tribes is far too shrouded in the semi-darkness of
prehistory and early history to be traced in the same detail as the de-normalisation of the
Hellenes and the Romans. The denormalisation of the peoples of the Germanic
language, on the other hand, is a process that is taking place in our present period.
8. Racial history of the German people
The last wave of predominantly Nordic peoples, which covered the period from 120 BC to
around 600 AD, the wave of Germanic expansion, probably not the most powerful of the
Nordic waves of peoples, became important for the history of the West mainly through
the event known as the Völkerwanderung, but which is better described as the last
migration of peoples or the
75
Germanic migration of peoples. It was followed by the Viking campaigns and the Norman
conquests as a weaker wave of predominantly Nordic expansion from around 700 to
1100. However, the Swedish military campaigns under Gustav Adolf and Charles XII
could also be interpreted as weaker waves of Nordic peoples.
As early as the Neolithic period, movements of peoples can be recognised which
originated in north-west Germany, an area in which tribes must have settled who later
appeared as Germanic tribes. As has been explained on p. 104, Germanic civilisation
developed from a
Map XII. The closed settlement area of the Germanic tribes around 2000 BC
(after Montelius).
In the Neolithic period, however, the Germanic tribes had already advanced beyond the
closed settlement area to Finland, the Baltic coastal countries, central Germany and
along the Vistula as far as Galicia.
76
Linguistically, the Germanic tribes (due to the first phonetic shift) probably developed
around 500
v. BC from the other peoples of Indo-European language. - In the period from 120 BC to
600 AD, Germanic tribes spread throughout central, western and southern Europe. -
Linguistically, the individual Germanic tribes separated from each other in the 4th century
AD.
The mutual interpenetration of the Faelic-Nordic megalithic ceramists, the Jutlandic
individual burial peoples (whose race was probably close to the Corded Ware ceramists)
and the Nordic Corded Ware ceramists, who penetrated north-west Europe towards the
end of the Neolithic. Megalithic and Corded Ware ceramics laid the foundation for the
development of the Bronze Age culture of the Germanic people, whose core area at that
time would have been Denmark.
Mainly in Denmark, Bronze Age Germanicism also included one or more broad-faced,
short-headed races, but this influence probably remained more in the lower classes. In
the main, the Bronze Age Germanic people represented
Map XIII: The expansion of the Germanic tribes between 1750 and 100 BC.
I. Southern border of the closed settlement area of the Germanic tribes 1750-
1400 BC (according to Kossina).
II. Southern border of the closed settlement area of the Germanic tribes 1400-
750 BC (according to Kossina).
III. The advance of the Swabian-Minonian tribes of the Germanic tribes until
around 600 BC (according to Wahle and Kossina).
IV. The advance of the Swabian-Minonian tribes of the Germanic tribes until
around 100 BC (according to Kossina).
a Nordic-Faelic racial mixture, in which the Nordic race seems to have increased over time,
especially during the Iron Age.
77
Within the entire area of north-western Europe, which can be regarded as Proto-
Germanic, the highest form of economy, the plough economy, appears earliest in the
Neolithic period. The climate, somewhat warmer and less humid than in today's northwest
Europe, seems to have favoured the development of this Proto-Germanic way of
life, which led to a flourishing of bronze casting in the Bronze Age, when the population
of north-west Germany was already quite dense, making north-west Europe appear to be
the most artistically advanced region in Europe during this period.
Of the two interpenetrating social circles from which Germanic civilisation can mainly be
derived, the Megalithicceramic and the Corded Ware, the Megalithicceramic circle
appears to be more insistent - apparently in accordance with the Faelic influence - while
the Corded Ware circle, which is more Nordic in its race, is more inclined towards
innovation. The cremation of corpses had also spread from the Corded Ware to the
Megalithic pottery.
The later spread of Germanism has already been mentioned above (p.118 and Map XII)
and can be seen in Map XIII. It ultimately led to the spread of the Ger- mans over the
whole of Central Europe and beyond and thus to the clash with the Roman Empire. In his
"Ger- mania" (98-99 AD), the Roman Tacitus (died 117 AD) describes the Germanic
tribes on today's German soil as a people "pure and only like themselves", as tall, blond,
blue-eyed people. The same physical traits and, in general, the mental characteristics of
the Nordic race are also found in the writings of other Roman historians as
characteristically Germanic. Only the Germanic tribes of today's north-western Germany,
the Chauks, in the area between the Ems and the Lower Elbe, are described by Tacitus
in such a way that one would like to find the Palaeolithic influence, which the grave finds
indicate, also hinted at in the description of the spiritual behaviour of this tribe.
In the Roman imperial period, the Germanic tribes switched from cremation to burial in
so-called "row graves". Since this time, enough bone remains have been preserved to
provide a racial testimony about the Germanic tribes, which can supplement the
information provided by the Roman writers. The graves in the inland areas of north-west
Germany clearly show the Palaeolithic influence, while the graves outside this area show
the strong predominance of the Nordic race. The index of skulls in the Frankish,
Burgundian and Gothic burial mounds averages around 73-75. Individual Alemannic
burial mounds in southern Germany show a stronger short-headed influence, with
admixtures of the Eastern and probably also the Dinaric race. However, at the time of the
Merovingian Frankish kings, Central and Western Europe may have been almost as
Nordic as Norway and Sweden are today, with the exception of the servant class.
With the exception of the servant class - even when Tacitus describes the Germanic
tribes, he only focusses on the free, who together made up the "people". The unfree, the
servants and freedmen, did not belong to the "people", neither according to Germanic
nor Roman opinion. Even the foreigners travelling through Germania, such as Roman,
Syrian and Jewish traders, did not count as part of the people, even after a long stay in
Germanic territory. However, the servant class, the unfree, was not relatively numerous
in Germanic territory. They could not have been entirely non-Nordic, as they included
Celtic prisoners of war, including those of predominantly Norse race, as well as
Germanic tribes who had fought among themselves. The non-Nordic influences of
today's Germanic people originate - apart from later immigrations of foreign peoples into
the German-speaking area - mainly from the originally relatively weak servant class of
the Germanic tribes and later also from the Germanised Slavic tribes; the Nordic
influence in today's Germanic people could go back in part to the Nordic Celts, and finally
also to the Uritalians; in the main, it is due to the hereditary dispositions of the early
medieval Germanic tribes to co-ethnicisation.
78
tele-European soil. The way in which the originally small numbers of non-Nordic races within
the German tribes of Germanic tribes could increase and the hereditary dispositions of the
predominantly Nordic and Nordic-Faelic Germanic tribes within the German tribes could
decrease proportionately, so that the present racial composition of the German people came
into being, is to be considered below, but has already been indicated by the example of
Siemens, which has been cited on p. 73.
Racial cross-breeding between the predominantly Nordic Germanic tribes and non-Nordic
people probably often occurred when a young crew set out to conquer farmland had no
women of their own or too few women of their own with them and took women of foreign
descent in the conquered territory. Neolithic grave finds in Silesian and Bohemian
territory already point to such circumstances. There were also opportunities for racial
interbreeding in the Roman-Germanic border region, especially in the Roman towns and
their surroundings in southern and western Germany. However, it is highly questionable
whether the free class entered into marital unions with the non-Germanic population of
such areas in any significant numbers. Even as late as the Middle Ages, a disregard for
dark skin, hair and eye colours can be seen at least among the German gentry, which
probably extended to the lower classes; until the end of the 16th century, only the Nordic
man was considered beautiful in the peoples of Germanic language and beyond - as I
have tried to prove in "Adel und Rasse" (2nd ed. 1928) - and this assessment of Nordic
racial characteristics has not yet been completely lost. In many Germanic tribes, the
death penalty was imposed for connections between the free class and the unfree class.
The Visigothic law clearly states that a free man would defile the purity of his blood
(claritas generis sordescit) through a union with a non-free woman. -
The removal of such racial barriers was only brought about by Christianity. From its
introduction, a gradual increase in racial interbreeding can be traced. "Here there is
neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free," Paul taught in Galatians (3:28)
with regard to things beyond. Early Christianity, which was even indifferent to the issue of
slavery among the Mediterranean peoples when it became a state faith, could not
escape certain consequences for conditions in this world. Thus a sentence such as the
one quoted from Galatians could be understood in this world and became so over time.
Around the 9th century, the separation of the free from the unfree began to diminish, but
in Lower Saxony the barrier between the free and the unfree, which was tantamount to a
racial barrier, still existed in the 11th century. The church contributed greatly to the
removal of racial barriers by making the unfree - apparently precisely because of their
docility towards their superiors - clergymen, whereby they became freemen by right. In
the Middle Ages, some freemen became ministerial knights through service to the
church. From the 12th and 13th centuries onwards, there were no longer any freemen in
the towns that were now emerging; city air made free, as the saying went; the church had
every participant in a crusade declared free.
Despite all this, a certain racial stratification, albeit no longer as clear as in the early
Germanic period, remained throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. The racial
stratification of pre-Christian times became the medieval stratification of estates, which
on the whole led from the lower estates, on average the poorest in Nordic blood, to the
upper estates, relatively richest in Nordic blood. A Provençal report from the 13th century
describes German crusaders, probably the majority of them knights, who travelled
through southern France, as thoroughly Nordic people, both physically and mentally.
But it was precisely the section of the population richest in Nordic blood that was hit far
harder by the feuds, crusades and wars of the Middle Ages than the minor Nordic
classes. The most Norse ethnic group was also the one that had to fight the wars alone.
79
However, the battles of the knightly armies were usually very costly. A further mark of
Nordic blood was the celibacy of the members of knightly orders, as well as the celibacy
of the clergy, among whom were many representatives of the estates richest in Nordic
blood. As the cities developed into centres of education and later also centres of power,
they became attractive to the more enterprising people, the Norse, who were drawn to
intellectual life, leadership and power. But as soon as a family has given up its rural
property and become urban, it has usually taken the turn towards extinction. We know
that mortality, especially infant mortality, was very high in the unhealthy medieval towns,
and we have noticed how in these towns, as is still the case today, older family names
are constantly disappearing and new ones appearing. Thus the city must have
contributed a great deal to the eradication of the Nordic race since the Middle Ages,
especially as its educational institutions have constantly attracted people from leading
families or families capable of leadership to professions - e.g. the professions of scholar,
clergyman, artist - with which celibacy was and is very often associated. From time
immemorial, the tendency or the perceived compulsion to "appear in keeping with one's
station" has also caused child poverty, especially in upwardly striving families, such as
those found more frequently within the Nordic race in accordance with the maritime
characteristics of this race. Taken together, such circumstances have led to the fact that
the Nordic race in the German people is finally defeated in the struggle for existence -
which is decided solely by the number of births! - despite or precisely because a
relatively large number of predominantly Nordic people have risen to the leading classes
and within the leading classes.
Despite all the major losses, the middle and upper classes of the German people, who
were richer in Nordic blood, may have had more children beyond the Middle Ages than
the lower classes, where infant mortality was very probably much higher than the not
insignificant infant mortality among the middle and upper classes. Right up to the present
day, there were restrictions on marriage licences for the lower classes, who were on
average the poorest in terms of Nordic blood, as according to German law only those
who could guarantee the preservation of a family had a right to marry. In Bavaria, until
1868, marriage licences were not granted to anyone who had received public poor relief
in the previous three years. Until well into the 19th century, these and similar regulations
limited the number of marriages and births in the lowest classes, which were on average
the poorest in terms of Nordic blood.
All kinds of laws were also directed against the infiltration of Wendish blood. The Slavic
colonisation of eastern Germany with its consequences for the racial composition of the
German people has been mentioned on pp. 111/112. Official regulations, guild laws,
marriage customs and mores, which persisted here and there until the 18th century, were
directed against the mixing of the lower class of Slavic origin, which was transitioning to
the German language and finally to German ethnicity. They probably also contributed to
the fact that the Wendish part of the population had at least as many children as the
Germans. This blood-based separation of the Wendish from the Germans was the
separation of one ethnicity from another, not of one race from another; in racial terms, it
must have had the effect of separating a people with a stronger Nordic flavour from a
people with a stronger East Baltic flavour. In the south-east of the German-speaking
area, the transition of people of South Slavic ethnicity into German ethnicity led to an
increase in the Dinaric influence. However, it should be borne in mind that at least the
upper class of the South Slavic tribes still had a strong Nordic flavour until the early
Middle Ages. Through the transition of South Slavs, even more through the transition of
Madjars and in more recent times the transition of very many Czechs to the German
ethnicity - just think of the Czech origin of many Viennese, apparently especially in the
district of Hernals, which also appears remarkably lighter than other Viennese districts -
the south-east of the German-speaking area received the true German influence.
80
This is also clearly visible in the mental behaviour of the Viennese population, according
to the anthropologist v. Eickstedt.
I would like to attribute this East Baltic influence in the south-east of the Germanspeaking
area mainly to immigration as late as the 19th century, but above all to the
increased reproduction of such immigrants that has become possible since the 19th
century. To all appearances, it was only the 19th century that created the German
language. It was only the 19th century that brought about the wealth of children that has
characterised the lower classes ever since, in that it was this century of expanding largescale
industry ("industrial age") that also provided people with less judgement, less
forethought, less creativity and enterprise, and finally, through the proliferation of factories,
even people who were decidedly lacking in judgement and talent, even physically and
mentally inferior, with the opportunity to earn a living, start a family and even have
children. Social legislation with its various types of "welfare" has ultimately increased
these conditions throughout the western world to such an extent that people with
extremely anti-social, community-destroying hereditary dispositions have been able to
reproduce more than those more capable people who had and still have to raise the
funds for the various welfare institutions through their taxes and who, under the pressure
of such conditions, have deliberately kept their number of children small.
As long as the age of craftsmanship lasted, Nordic man must have been favoured, or at
least less inhibited, than the people of the non-Nordic races of Europe when it came to
employment and, above all, starting a family and raising children. Despite the losses to
which the Nordic race has always been exposed due to its aptitude for warfare, for state
and spiritual leadership, despite the losses which this very race has suffered through
emigration since the opening up of the non-European continents, especially North America -
it has been established that up to about the last third of the 19th century the emigrants of
all the occidental races had a higher proportion than those of the Nordic races. Despite
all these and other losses, the Nordic race has probably been able to achieve relatively
higher numbers of children until more recent times. The non-Nordic component of the
German people has probably increased slowly since the early Middle Ages, perhaps
more rapidly due to the counter-selection of the Thirty Years' War, but apparently only
particularly rapidly since the end of the artisan age and the beginning of the age of largescale
industry. Where large-scale industry has spread the longest and most, such as in
Saxony, non-Nordic hereditary traits have probably been able to assert themselves most
strongly against an apparently considerable Nordic influence in the past. I have in
"Nobility and Race" can cite evidence from the 18th century about the distinctly Nordic
appearance of the Saxon upper class at the time. Saxony was popularly known as the
land "where the beautiful girls grow" - and "beautiful" used to mean more than it does
today, predominantly Nordic. The eastern Baltic and eastern influence of today's Saxony
can be attributed primarily to the favouring of these less creative races in the birth
competition by the large-scale industry. Similar conditions, modified depending on the
landscape, apply to the entire German-speaking area.
In his story De Eurialo et Lucretia, the Italian Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II, who
had spent a lot of time in Germany from 1432-45, describes the Germans of the time - but
certainly only the upper classes - as very Nordic and, to him, exceptionally beautiful people.
His description is certainly an exaggeration, which can also be explained by the fact that he
is describing the race that was rarer in Italy and more characteristic of Germany at the time.
The skulls of the fallen of the German imperial army f rom the battlefield near Dornach
(Basel) in 1499,
81
indicate that this army, consisting mainly of southern German and Austrian
Landsknechts, i.e. mostly representatives of the lower classes, must already have been
characterised by strong non-Nordic influences. The racial difference between the
Germans of his time and the Germanic tribes of the Migration Period was first discussed
by Hermann Conring (1606-81), a professor of medicine at the University of Helmstedt
(Brunswick), and later, at the end of the 17th century, by the Swedish anatomist Olaf
Rudbeck.
Skull finds show the increasing de-normalisation of the Germans. Skulls from the northwest
German row graves (cf. p. 121 f.) have an average length-width index of 75.9. The
average index of today's north-west German population (converted from the head to the
skull) may be between 78 and 80. Early medieval skulls from Andernach on the Rhine
have an average length-width index of 74.6, skulls of today's Andernach population have
one of 81.2 (the average head index of conscripts for the predominantly Nordic Sweden
is 78.12, which, converted to the skull, is about 77). It should be borne in mind, however,
that the skull finds from the Middle Ages, especially the early Middle Ages, almost
exclusively bear witness to the more carefully buried upper classes of the population.
Among the one hundred skulls found in the row graves in Bavaria from the Migration
Period are 42 long skulls and 14 short skulls. This is roughly the ratio of Bavarian skull
shapes until the 12th century. From the 12th century onwards, the number of long skulls
gradually decreased and the number of short skulls increased. Today, there is one long
skull and 83 short skulls for every 100 skulls in southern Bavaria (in Sweden, there are
30.18 long skulls and 14.07 short skulls for every 100 heads of conscripts). The Swiss
anthropologist Schwerz made the following judgement on the racial changes in his
homeland: "Only in Sweden and north-west Germany do peoples still live today who
have physical characteristics similar to those of the Alemanni (of the Migration Period
and the early Middle Ages)." When v. Hoelder examined the skulls from a cemetery in
Eßlingen (Württemberg), which dated from 1614 to 1846 and can be attributed to the
middle to upper classes, he found that more than a third of the skulls were Nordic and
predominantly Nordic and only a few without Nordic admixture. The same ethnic groups
in the same city would not appear so Nordic today.
Apart from the accelerated increase in non-Nordic hereditary traits, which has very
probably been going on since the 19th century, the freedom of movement since the
beginning of the 19th century has considerably promoted the mixing and interbreeding of
races. At the time of Virchow's examination of schoolchildren in 1874-77, the fact that the
countryside was less mixed than the cities was indicated by the fact that brown-eyed
brown-haired people and blue-eyed blondes were relatively more common in the
countryside, whereas mixed forms (brown-eyed blondes, blue-eyed brown-haired people,
etc.) were more common in the cities. Today, this difference between rural and urban
areas has become much smaller. Throughout the 19th century, the German population
lost many predominantly Nordic emigrants. 40 per cent of the American officers who
fought against Germany in 1918 were descendants of emigrated Germans. Pictures of
such officers usually show them as predominantly Nordic people. In Heilbronn
(Württemberg), Schliz was able to determine a clear decrease in the number of blondes
in the period between 1876 and 1898. Such signs of de-normalisation, i.e. the relative
decrease in the Nordic influence, have also been observed in France, England and
Holland; in France above all by Lapouge, who followed up his findings from racial
measurements with the warning that this de-normalisation would cause the decline of
French morality (culture) according to all the results of racial history.
The growth of the large cities in the 19th century seems to have created more
opportunities for the Eastern race in particular to earn a living and start a family.
82
Given the lack of research, this cannot be proven. But when the illustrators of scenes
from the life of smaller and larger towns depict the small tradesmen who are also
caretakers, the small innkeepers, master bakers and "businessmen", agents,
intermediaries, etc., with the characteristics of the Eastern race and precisely as fathers
of large families, everyone finds this to be a correct observation. Gottfried Keller must
have sensed the emergence of these comfortable, gainfully employed petty bourgeois
during the second half of the 19th century and in an urban environment when he
described the change in the behaviour of the people of Seldwyla in the preface to the
second volume of his "Leute von Seldwyla" (People of Seldwyla), as the essentially
Nordic-Dinaric observer described it half jokingly, half bitterly. His description so clearly
reflects traits of the Eastern racial soul that it can be interpreted as a sign of racial
change within the German-speaking population.
In the same period when Eastern and Eastern Baltic people were able to have more
children, the circumstances mentioned on pp. 125 f. contributed to the increasing child
poverty of the rising and leading predominantly Nordic families, and - as
p. 59 f. - it is precisely within the Nordic race that a relatively large number of ascending
and leading families continue to emerge. One need only think of such families as those of
higher civil servants and officers, so rich on average in Nordic blood, and their
characteristic poverty of children. Before the World War, the officer class in Germany
comprised about 40,000 men, and it was precisely this select group that was forced by
irresponsibly low salaries into late marriages, celibacy, money marriages and birth
control that were questionable from a hereditary and racial point of view. Similar
conditions also inhibited the procreation of groups such as elementary school teachers,
non-commissioned officers and police officers, who were apparently richer than average
in northern blood and selected on the basis of their ability. How high might the number of
children be within the selection of today's Reichswehr, which is so rich in Nordic blood? -
An average of four children per marriage or the rearing of an average of three children
beyond the age of five have been specified as the minimum number of children for a
human group that wants to survive or reproduce at a low rate. However, the birth rate in
Europe decreases from east to west and from south to north, i.e. the reverse of the
Nordic influence on European populations. It is decreasing from the bottom to the top of
the social classes, also the reverse of the Nordic population trend. Thus today we see a
counter-movement against the southern and eastern waves of Nordic peoples of
prehistory and history, and a multiplication of the occidental peoples from below, from the
classes that are on average poorest in Nordic blood. Only in recent times does this
process of de-normalisation seem to have slowed down a little in that the birth rate
increase is now increasingly spreading to the lower classes of Central and Western
Europe, which are on average the poorest in terms of Nordic blood.
Today in all Western countries - according to an expression of the American race
researcher Grant - the Nordic blood is effectively steered away, namely by the fact that
the upper classes of the people, who are on average richer in Nordic blood, are hit
hardest by tax legislation and thus forced to prevent births. It is precisely those families
that are socially ascendant as a result of more capable hereditary dispositions,
characterised by thoughtfulness, a thirst for intellectual goods, a delight in the
competition of achievements, that limit the number of children the most, while the "hope
of state aid", which Lapouge cited as a mental trait of the Eastern race, enables Eastern
and also Eastern Baltic people to have more children. Surveys have shown that even
among German manual labourers, the families most capable of advancement die out
quickly; at the same time, however, according to K. V. Müller, a social democrat, there
were an astonishing number of predominantly Nordic people among the pioneers of the
socialist movement, i.e. in its leading class.
83
people, probably on average the most childless of their circles. It is precisely the
leadership qualities of the Nordic people that make them lose out in the fertility
competition between the races under the conditions of the present period.
From a racial point of view, the world war meant an acceleration of de-normalisation for
all the peoples involved. Although in the World War, unlike in the wars of the Middle
Ages, which were fought by the relatively most Nordic class of people, and also unlike in
later wars, whose armies consisted of selections of people of higher growth and fighting
ability, the individual races in the racial mix of the belligerent peoples were used to
almost the same extent, the proportionately much higher losses of officers already
indicate the greater eradication of the Nordic race associated with the World War. The
immediate sight of the French officers, i.e. the officers of a people poorer in Nordic blood,
made it possible to recognise the above-average influence of Nordic blood among the
officers of the occidental peoples. Like the English, the German picture magazines,
which during the World War - very often with the addition that the person depicted had
fallen in the meantime - brought pictures of particularly distinguished officers and men,
can also serve as an indication of the particular losses of the Nordic race. One need only
recall the selection of particularly energetic and predominantly Nordic people among
certain, particularly exposed special detachments or among such groups as the fighter
pilots. However, the predominantly Nordic people being pushed into military service
during the World War was clearly recognisable only by the sight of the North American
volunteers and has also been described by American racial researchers and the French
racial researcher Lapouge.
The post-war period brought the Western peoples a particular increase in the steering
away of Nordic hereditary dispositions mentioned above (p. 133), and the German
people suffered heavy emigration losses, in which the Nordic race was and is probably
again more strongly involved, although today emigration no longer requires such
hereditary dispositions of a psychological nature as it did in the middle of the 19th
century.
It is clear that the loss of the hereditary dispositions of the Nordic race, which had been
taking place in Germany since the Middle Ages, slowly at first and then at an accelerated
rate, also had to manifest itself in the spiritual behaviour of the German people. In the
case of France, Lapouge pointed out the change in morals, or in other words, the decay
of morals, which took place and continues to take place in interaction with the denormalisation
of the French people (which I described in "Rassenkunde Europas"). In
recent and more recent times, complaints have also been heard in England about a rapid
dwindling of "genuinely English" character, and a keen observer of racial studies like
Inge, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, has attributed this loss of "genuinely
English" character to increasing de-normalisation, as his book "England" (popular edition
1927), which caused a sensation in England, shows.
When a Lagarde writes in Germany: "We have never had a German history, unless the
downright progressive loss of German essence is supposed to be German history" - one
is tempted, from a racial point of view, to see this loss of "German essence" as a
consequence of the loss of Nordic tribes. In fact, it could be demonstrated how the
German ethnicity
- Since the Middle Ages, Germany has lost more and more Nordic spirit and absorbed
more and more non-Nordic spirit, and how this process has been so accelerated by the
selection conditions of the 19th century that today the Nordic spirit in the German people
is already endangered, non-Nordic spirit already wants to dominate.
It is just as indicative of the Germans' inattention as it is of the Jews' attention to racial
issues that not a German, but a Jew
84
Walter Rathenau first expressed his insights into the racial situation of the German
people in his books "Reflexionen" (1908) and "Zur Mechanik des Geistes" (1921).
Rathenau wanted to explain the conditions of the present from two processes,
"mechanisation" and "de-Germanisation", as he called what today is more accurately
described as de-normalisation. This de-normalisation appeared to him to be the cause of
"the lack of direction, depth and idealism". He saw an age of all-mixing coming for the
West and asked: "Is it really the goal of thousands of years of effort to brew a grey,
morass-like mixture from all the colourfulness and uniqueness of human tribes?" -
However, he also believes that the time has come for a racial renewal that would come
from people "whose eyes have seen - not only for the connection between the spiritual
complex itself, but unfortunately also for the connection between the spiritual and the
physical outer form". Only the few who have become sighted are still too timid to
"exchange their thoughtful experiences". - In his "Reflections" (1908), when racial studies
and pre-historical research had only just begun to demonstrate the special significance of
the Nordic race, Rathenau concluded that a "Nordification" (reorganisation, renormalisation)
was necessary for a renewal of the West. An age would come that would
signify a "new romanticism" and bring the establishment of the image of the Nordic race
as a human model.
The fact that since about the first third of the 19th century, in this country earlier, in that
country later, a certain decay has occurred in the entire Western world, a noticeable
decline in the creative forces, is recognised today - after even a work like Spengler's
"Decline of the Occident" has provided this insight - is now almost only disputed by those
who confuse morality (culture) with the gradually accumulated quantity of technical
processes (civilisation) and their expansion, even by those who are involved in this decay
in a business sense. A Spengler, however, has the cause of
"decline of the Occident", whereas the first person to point out this impending "decline",
Count Arthur Gobineau, had already clearly expressed its cause, the dwindling of the
Nordic influence of the Occidental peoples, in his "Es- sai sur I'Inégalité des Races
humaines" (1853-55). This insight was expressed b y the social hygienist Grotjahn (who
belonged to the Social Democratic Party and was therefore not inclined to favour the
reputation of the upper classes) in his work "Geburtenrückgang und Geburtenregelung"
(1921):
"In any case, the present state of affairs, in which the addition to the upper circles takes
place less through their own increase than through the rise of individuals from the lower
classes, must in the course of time certainly lead to the complete exhaustion
(impoverishment) of the nation in terms of the capable, the gifted and the strong-willed" -
through such an insight, This insight, which must be supplemented by the racial insight of
the relatively stronger Nordic influence of the upper classes, sufficiently describes the
cause of the Western decay that has become apparent today, the cause of the apparent
decline of German morals (culture).
9. The Nordic idea
The consideration of the fate of peoples as an effect of the laws of life (biological)
processes, as an effect of changing selection conditions, has only become possible in a
fruitful way since Darwin recognised the importance of selection for living beings in
general (cf. p. 72), but above all since Galton (1822-1911), Darwin's cousin, and then the
French natural scientist and racial researcher Lapouge (born 1854), transferred such
insights into the laws of life to the study of animal life and history. The rediscovery of
Mendel's research into heredity (see p. 77) in 1900 gave the teachings of Galton and
Lapouge on the laws of life a deeper justification and increased significance. Around the
turn of the century, the work of Gobineau, the "great pioneer" (Eugen Fischer) of the
racial renewal movement, also began to have an impact on Schemann's translation of
"Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenrassen".
85
The Foundations of the 19th Century" by H. St. Chamberlain (1855-1927) was published, a
work which did not want to join the scientific racial research of the time and also turned
against Gobineau, but which contributed a great deal to proving the importance of race for
the life of nations and history through the enthusiastic approval and the fierce opposition it
met with. In 1896 "Les Sélec- tions sociales" and in 1899 "L'Aryen, son Rôle social" were
published, both works by Count Lapouge, which, like those of Gobineau and Chamberlain,
emphasised the role of the Nordic race in the history of the peoples of Indo-European
languages. The research of the Germans Otto Ammon (1842-1915), Woltmann (1871-1907)
and Wilser (1850-1923) confirmed the view of the special significance of the Nordic race.
Since the turn of the century, the idea of a renewal of the West through racial cultivation, or
more precisely: through the cultivation of the Nordic race within the racial mix of the Western
peoples, began to stir and slowly spread. The Nordic idea emerged. I have traced the
foundations and the gradual growth of this idea of racial renewal since the turn of the century
in detail in the book "Der Nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen" (2nd edition 1927).
The destruction of the German people's strength through the world war, the outcome of
this war, the post-war years and the culling of valuable hereditary tribes that took place
during all these years - a culling that ultimately made the German people appear to be
composed quite differently in body and soul - all these processes and their
86
Fig. 84 a and b. Selection group of predominantly Nordic race:
Nordic-minded youth from Austria
The consequences and the reflection on them have contributed significantly to spreading a
certain knowledge of, and for many even a deeper awareness of, heredity and selection,
race, racial crossbreeding and the racial composition of peoples among the German people.
Thus, since the post-war years, probably above all since the growth of a youth which, on the
one hand, does not feel responsible for the pre-war period, the war and the end of the war
and, on the other hand, seeks the possibilities of a renewal of the German people from the
ground up, a Nordic movement has arisen which, by increasing the Nordic influence of all
German tribes, by re-normalising the German people, would like to initiate the hereditary
improvement of this people (cf. Fig. 84).
Similar endeavours have also led to the amalgamation of Norwegian-minded circles in
North America. Racial studies, such as Grant's and Stoddard's, have already influenced
immigration legislation in North America. Australia, i.e. the government there, which is
essentially determined by the workers' trade unions, has also decided on immigration
laws and customs which favour the immigration of predominantly Nordic people and are
intended to inhibit or prevent the immigration of non-Nordic people.
The Nordic movement in the German Empire and in Austria would like to achieve an
increase in Nordic hereditary dispositions in the German people through a relatively
higher number of children of hereditarily healthy, predominantly Nordic Germans of all
tribes and estates married to hereditarily healthy, predominantly Nordic spouses. In other
words, it would like to see the Nordic race no longer lose out in the ongoing fertility
competition between the races, but eventually win out, and would thus like to remould the
German people from the ground up, from its genetic make-up, over the centuries in such
a way that it regains the strong core of Nordic race that was its own in its creative times.
Many Germans today are only "language genes", i.e. language heirs of the Germanic
tribes, no longer their blood heirs. Through a "victory" of the "Germanic" in the racial
sense, i.e. the predominantly Nordic Germans
87
The Nordic Movement wants to reawaken the creative power of early Germanism in the
German people.
Thus the Nordic Movement is not about the revival of early Germanic morals, customs
and individual views (which in itself is impossible or leads to meaningless things), not
about any kind of "romanticism", about any kind of looking backwards, but about a
thoroughly forward-looking thought; not about the attempt to revive things that have
become historical, but about the endeavour to restore to the German people that core of
the Nordic race on whose existence its actual "Germanness" is based. A German people
that has become predominantly Eastern and Eastern Baltic, and in addition has been led
in the spiritual direction of the Eastern and Eastern Baltic race, could only call itself
"German" to the extent that it would continue to use the German language, which
originated in the Nordic spirit, in a more or less modified form. Its racial-spiritual direction
would be obvious to the observer who would recognise the essence of the German people
(revealed by its creative achievements).
"Germanness" would have appeared to be thoroughly "un-German".
The high valuation of Nordic hereditary dispositions of body and soul, as is characteristic of
the Nordic Movement, is not directed at the predominantly Nordic individual as such, but
rather always only at the predominantly Nordic person as the bearer of heredity. This
high valuation is also not directed against the individual non-Nordic ethnic group
member, rather the latter should be valued as highly as he deserves according to his
nature and for his contributions to the national whole; the Nordic Movement will only
desire a higher number of children from the more Nordic ethnic group member and a
lower number from the less Nordic or non-Nordic one. It therefore sees increased
obligations for the predominantly Nordic German and his way of life and must judge the
healthy, predominantly Nordic German above all as the bearer of inheritance and
therefore with all the greater rigour.
A number of objections can be raised against this high valuation of the Nordic race within
the German people. Such objections have already been raised in a more or less
remarkable, also more or less passionate manner, as I have shown in my book "Der
Nordische Gedanke unter den Deutschen" (2nd ed. 1927), countering objections. If one
considers the pros and cons and assesses the possible side effects and consequences
of the Nordic movement, then in the end no objection remains weighty enough in the face
of a situation such as that characterised by Eugen Fischer as early as 1910 in his lecture
"Social Anthropology and its Significance for the State": "The Germanic blood, the Nordic
race, has already been eradicated in Italy, Spain and Portugal. The result is decline, in
part insignificance! - France is the next nation to suffer - and then us
— with absolute certainty if things continue as they are today." - You only need to
compare the achievements of two predominantly Nordic peoples such as Sweden and
Norway, taking into account their populations - Norway has around half the population of
Berlin, Sweden around 6 million - with the achievements of the southern and eastern
European peoples, who are poor in Nordic blood, and you need only
— for Italy and France according to Woltmann's books "Die Germanen und die Renaissance
in Italien" (1905) and "Die Germanen in Frankreich" (1907) - to recognise the
predominance of the Nordic race among the creative (ingenious) people of the Occident, in
order to recognise the preservation and increase of the Nordic influence - the endangered
influence - in his tribe and people as a patriotic task.
It is clear that the Nordic movement, since it regards people much less as individuals
than as hereditary carriers, is completely imbued with the idea of hereditary health care
(eugenics, racial hygiene). The demands of the hereditary health doctrine have been
adopted by the Nordic movement for its followers. It is not the Nordic man per se, but the
hereditarily healthy Nordic man that the Nordic movement wants to use as a model for
selection in the German people.
88
recognised. Since opponents of the Nordic idea, looking for objections, always point to
more or less degenerate Nordic people of the past or present, the Nordic movement
must be particularly interested in the child poverty or childlessness of degenerate,
predominantly Nordic people. Not only de-normalisation alone, but also a degeneration
(increase of inferior hereditary dispositions) spreading within all races of the historically
significant peoples of Indo-European language has contributed to the decline of these
peoples. The advocates of the Nordic idea will always be the most ardent supporters of
the hereditary health doctrine (considering all races).
How urgently necessary state hereditary health care would be, especially for the German
Reich, cannot be proven here; for all such questions, reference should be made to the
work by Baur-Fischer-Lenz mentioned on p. 78 and to Grotjahn, Hygiene der
menschlichen Fort- pflanzung (1927). A thoroughgoing state hereditary health care -
which would clearly not have to consider the races represented in the people separately,
but rather would have to cover the existing racial mixture alone as a population without
any racial differentiation - such a general hereditary health care could easily be
connected to the existing welfare and insurance institutions in the German Reich in such
a way that in certain cases the granting of welfare and insurance benefits would be
possible, that in certain cases the granting of welfare benefits and insurance money
would be made dependent on the consent of the person being cared for to his infertility
(which does not hinder his sexual enjoyment, but only prevents procreation). What
Grotjahn explained using the example of tuberculosis applies to many hereditary
dispositions: "Only when we cut off the possibility of passing on their physical inferiority
by way of inheritance can we allow them to benefit from measures of a medical, nursing,
socio-hygienic and economic nature without having to fear doing more harm than good to
the whole" (Leitsätze zur sozialen und generativen Hygiene, 1922). - Accordingly, the
same Grotjahn states: "The nation that first succeeds in putting the entire hospital and
institutional system at the service of weeding out the physically and mentally inferior
would gain a lead over all other nations that grows from decade to decade" (Soziale
Pathologie, 3rd ed. 1923). - If such measures, for which the legislation of the United
States already shows exemplary beginnings, were to curb degeneration, an actual
regeneration would have to be initiated by promoting the reproduction of the hereditarily
superior as far as possible by legal means, as has been suggested.
Grotjahn, one of the most important promoters of the idea of Aufartung, nevertheless
tried to reject the idea of Aufnordung. Siemens, mentioned on p. 75, advised the Nordic
Movement to join the general reorganisation movement while abandoning its special
goals. Both researchers, like other representatives of the hereditary health doctrine, show
by their behaviour towards the Nordic idea that they are concerned with the hereditary
health of the German people, but not with their racial-spiritual direction. Hereditary health
care can be practised on any population, irrespective of race; the more hereditary health
care wants to win over the state solutions of our time, the more it must be indifferent to
the lesser or greater reproduction of the individual races within a population, and thus to
the racial-soul direction of the people and its transformation. The Nordic idea, however,
arose precisely out of concern for the racial and spiritual direction of Germanness.
Degeneration means a great deal to the advocates of the Nordic idea, but not everything.
Only Aufartung and Aufnordung will save actual Germanity.
The task of reunification can be undertaken by the state; the task of reorganisation in
Germany and Austria can only be solved by the self-help of the Nordic race, by the union of
Nordic-minded Germans; for it is clear that the state cannot make special racial aspirations
its own. By uniting the Nordic-minded Germans, the standardisation of the German race will
be achieved.
89
The rearing of an above-average number of children by healthy, predominantly Nordic
spouses is not only dependent on the sense of racial duty to be awakened in such
spouses, but also on their economic situation.
It has been shown that many minor Nordic and even non-Nordic Germans have not only
not rejected, but have even welcomed the establishment of the physical and spiritual
image of the Nordic race as the model for selection in the German people by virtue of
their ability to think beyond themselves. An image (ideal) of the perfect man, the beautiful
man or the noble man, which essentially bears Nordic traits of body and soul, is still
active among the German people. Tall, blond, blue-eyed Germans are still perceived as
"genuinely German"; artists of sound sensibility still depict the nobility and beauty of the
Nordic race in symbolic figures and heads. Young people of the type depicted in Fig. 84
are still regarded as the best physical and spiritual expressions of German character. The
best Germans are still characterised by a Nordic tendency. Once they have grasped the
truth - not so easily accessible to many Germans with their lack of sense of reality - that a
realisation of beauty and nobility is only possible through the embodiment of these values
in hereditarily increasing generations, they will come closer to the Nordic idea more
quickly. Once it has been realised that there is nothing higher for a people than the
physical representation of its noblest values in its people, an idea such as that of
enabling the best Germans to have more children as the noblest race - consciously or
unconsciously - will hardly meet with any resistance.
But the ability to think beyond oneself and one's heritage, to understand oneself - as
Nietzsche intended - as a "transition and downfall", to seek one's "children's land" will
always, or at least for centuries to come, be part of grasping the Nordic idea; for who of
today's Germans could easily approach the model of selection of the hereditarily healthy
Nordic man? - And if he could do so for himself and according to his appearance, a
glance at his clan would teach him what dispositions he must still reckon with, not only for
his clan, but probably also for his hereditary image. The Nordic idea demands a will that
wants to stretch beyond the centuries: "We are nothing; what we seek is everything"
(Hölderlin). But this self-conquest is also rewarded by the awareness of having a share in
the spirit that alone will truly and permanently shape the life of nations, a spirit that
determines the direction of selection.
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