Yearly Archives: 2013

Eugenics and National Identity

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In Breeding Superman, Dan Stone aims to describe and resolve the confusion that still surrounds eugenics in inter-war Britain.  Many people are under the impression that the study of eugenics in Britain was based primarily on class, and was less focused on race.  However, Stone argues vehemently against this belief, stating that race and class eugenics were virtually interchangeable in Britain.

Stone notes several influential British eugenicists, including Robert Reid Rentoul, Charles Armstrong, and C.P. Blacker, all of whom advocated on behalf of racist eugenics.  The racist opinions of these men greatly impacted Britain’s overwhelming fear of miscegenation.  When describing the extremist eugenicists, Stone states, “Although these were extremists, there were too many of them, and their views were not so far removed from those of the mainstream ideas on race” (99).  Eugenicists also upheld the belief that Britain was not concerned with race, but only class eugenics.  This ideal was promoted to ameliorate Britain’s image in terms of the eugenics.  Contrary to popular belief, the history of inter-war Britain was far more racist than many people care to realize, and this is due in large part to various racist eugenicists.

In “National Taste? Citizenship Law, State Form, and Everyday Aesthetics in Modern France and Germany, 1920-1940,” Leora Auslander addresses the nation-state from various viewpoints, and how citizens and groups are impacted by state policies—specifically pertaining to Jews in France and Germany.

While France aimed to create a more central government, and encouraged all its citizens to emulate French culture, Germany allowed its citizens to have much more independence, as it had recently merged twenty-two monarchies and three republics.  In response to these cultural guidelines, French and German Jews responded appropriately; French Jews chose to adhere “to a common, distinctively French culture,” while German Jews focused less on remaining civilized (123).  This is significant, because both the French Jews and the German Jews felt obligated to accurately represent their country, as a means of national identity.

Both Stone and Auslander describe the issue of national identity, through eugenics and everyday cultural expectations.  However, both arguments are similar because they depict the hysteria that can surround one nation’s self-image.

Eugenics Post

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The theory of eugenics can be described as a battle of survival of the fittest between human beings. It’s origins are Darwinist in nature, and they came to fruition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It took the first world war to make many of the leading intellectuals in both Western Europe and USA believe in such a ideal. With the loss of population after world war one it was theorized that the only way to develop into a strong powerful country would be by artificially modifying a certain population to make sure that it was as strong and healthy as possible. Also at this time many nationalistic parties such as the Nazis sought to use eugenics so they could build a super human race that would eliminate “undesirables” from the population.

As a result of eugenics connection to both racism and nationalism many peoples including jews felt the desire to “assimilate” into the culture of which they were living in. In the selected readings of Leora Auslanders we read of the attempted assimilation of both french and german jews. There desire for acceptance by their “native” peers caused the jews to throw away there collective heritage in a desire to become the “perfect” german or frenchman. This desire for assimilation can be directly related to eugenics. Many jews wanted to gain employment in both the government and private sector, and to do this they had to look like they were part of the larger machine, not as a interloper in society. This is why many of them became more german then a typical german, and with that he lost some of his personality. Eugenics and all the theories connected to it take away a mans freedom and individually. It then replace it will a idea for only furthering the “common” goal at all costs. This practice had a rather adverse effect on the history of the world.

 

 

National Identity: the Role of Eugenics and Culture

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Leora Auslander’s “’National Taste?’ Citizenship Law, State Form, and Everyday Aesthetics in Modern France and Germany, 1920-1940” described the way in which the French and German nations had dealt with the issue of identity and citizenship, specifically in terms of the Jewish populations. This text illustrated the similarities between Parisian and Berliner Jews and the larger French and German populations. These groups were marginalized in various and different ways in each country, but, through analyzing personal belongs and furnishings, Auslander discovered a cultural cohesion throughout the groups. Because the Jews and the non-Jewish French and German populations decorated their houses in much the same way (the French decorated similarly, but their style was different from that of the German populations), indicating that these populations (German or French versus Jewish) were not fundamentally different as many eugenicists had argued during this same era.

Throughout the Interwar Period especially, eugenics evolved and advanced as an area of study that gained more and more influence in politics. In Chapter Four of Breeding Superman, the author, Dan Stone argues that eugenics held a key place in British politics throughout the beginning of the 20th Century, as the Empire fought to preserve its strength. This same argument can be applied to France and Germany during this period. Both countries became more concerned with the strength of their populations, especially in light of the massive loses caused by World War I. Each of these three countries defined citizenship differently, though each definition inherently placed some groups above others. The Jews in each case were understood to be inferior to the “native” population. In France, however, this argument became more complex as there was a hierarchy between French Jews and foreign Jews. (This distinction would prove to be very important as both the Occupied and Non-occupied Zones began to deport Jews in 1942.)

Eugenics was not the sole factor in this hierarchy. Auslander explains in “’National Taste?’” that culture was another very important aspect in determining national identity. Citizenship in France became directly linked to culture as the law changed to jus soli (citizenship determined by territory of birth). That is not to say, however, that eugenics did not influence the French during this period. Eugenics shaped politics or political thought throughout most of Europe. While many aspects of eugenics were racist, as Stone acknowledges, this was not forcibly the case; today, people across the world view eugenics in a very negative light due to the policies and actions of Nazi Germany during the war.

A Countries’ True Agenda

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The introduction and first chapter of The Lost Children by Tara Zahra and the first chapter of Cultivating the Masses by David Hoffman both explore the concept of the welfare state. Although these works focus on different groups, Zarah focusing on children and Hoffman focusing on the population as a whole, both authors have come to the same conclusion; a country’s welfare programs are implemented to benefit the country as whole, not necessarily for an individual’s gain.

From the start of reading The Lost Children Zahra writes that programs were implemented to increase the productivity of the country. Mrs. Roch, and American social worker, was assigned to Ruth-Karin Dadowic’s case. Roch described Ruth-Karin as “well built for her age with a strong and firm handshake.” Ruth-Karin was chosen to participate in the Displaced Persons Act, and from this description it is implied she is chosen because of her health and capabilities. She is more likely to be a contributing member of society, and thus increase the productivity of the country. Another example of the true goals of social welfare programs is exemplified through the Spanish Civil War refugees. The social welfare programs only saved children to secure their political, social, and religious loyalties and to transform them into the republican or nationalist militants of the future (Zahar, 16). This was also true of the campaign to rehabilitate Europe’s lost children; it was merely for the future of Europe’s well being (Zahar, 23). In the St. Goin colony, J. M. Alvarez would use his position as director to instill Republican and nationalist values in the wards he was in charge of educating and looking after (Zahar, 26). All of this was to benefit the country, not the individual.

Hoffman’s writing in Cultivating the Masses is directly related to these examples from Zahar’s text. Hoffman wrote that a country was concerned with social welfare to increase productivity of the country. By implementing social welfare programs, it increased the standard of living of the citizens, increasing the productivity of the country (Hoffman, 18-20).

From Hoffman and Zarah, the reader learns that the citizen is merely a pawn for the country. Although it may appear that social welfare is implemented because the country cares about the individual, it is simply not true. A country is merely concerned with it’s well being as a whole, and the benefits trickle down to the individual.

Social and Psychological issues surrounding the “Lost Children”

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Tara Zahra’s book, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II, describes the psychological impacts and social problems of war on displaced children. The psychological problems that occurred with children being separated from their families arose after the First World War, but became more of an issue after World War II. There was complete chaos in Europe with the children being in the center of social and political upheaval.

After World War I, families were separated and there were a lack of resources. Campaigns were created to protect children. These campaigns focused on getting enough food and water, and having shelter for the children to rest in. Many children, during the war, were sent to live with a foster family in a neighboring country where they were well nourished and supported by their foster parents. After the war there was a movement to reunite families, but this created an issue. Children were sent to their home state to be reunited with their families, but their families lacked adequate resources, including food, housing, and income. Another issue that arose was that families had been separated for such a long period of time that they didn’t reconnect, so children wanted to be sent home to their host families. “Children were central objects of population politics, nation building projects, and new forms of humanitarian intervention in the twentieth century, as they represented the biological and political future of national communities.” (Zahra 20).

After World War II, Germany divided into four zones by the Allies. Many organizations, including social workers, German foster parents, and Jewish agencies, fought for the “lost children” to determine their fates.  This became the social problem: “The lost identity of individual children is the Social Problem of the day on the continent of Europe.” (Zahra 3). The psychological problems came about because of Europe being in ruins after World War II.  “They linked the physical ruin of European cities to the psychological disorientation of their residents.” (Zahra 3).

The psychological problem with the children being uprooted all of the time was that they would never forget what happened to them during the war. During war, children were starving, put in concentration camps, and forced into labor. The government believed that it was better when the children were reunited with their families because it was in their best interest and their psychological problems would diminish if they were safe and sound.

Much of what is stated in Zahra’s book can be compared to Hoffman’s articles on social welfare and the modern state. In Hoffman’s modern state article, he argues that using social science is key to eradicate problems that are occurring in a nation. The social science will tell the public statistics about a certain issue, such as how many children were displaced during and after the war. These statistics helped the government to see how many children were reunited with their families after being displaced. Hoffman’s social welfare article is extremely relevant to Zahra’s introduction and first chapter of her book. His thesis in this article is that social welfare is for the betterment of the country and not the people. In Zahra’s article she refers that the governments force children to return to their families, when in actuality their host family was a better psychological environment for them. The government is more concerned about the state because it wants maximum production, so sending a child back to his or her home country will help the output of that country.

The Shift From Material to Psychological Humanitarian Efforts in Post-war Europe.

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Tara Zahra’s book, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II is a heartbreaking account of displaced and impoverished children lacking national identities. In the introduction and first chapter, parallels are drawn between both the physical reconstruction of post-war Europe and the reconstruction of childhood identity. These children were at the center of political conflicts and were the social problem that dominated Europe from the onset of World War I. The state of Europe’s children represented the civilization itself in chaos. Organizations after World War 1 sought to supply these children with immediate material needs. After the Spanish Civil War and World War II, however, humanitarian efforts were ideologically transformed. While some intense nationalistic and political goals still lay underneath the surface, the primary function of these social organizations were now to serve the psychological needs of a child with an incomplete family, empty stomach, and no national identity.

The responses to World War 1 and the Armenian Genocide set the stage for future humanitarian endeavors. These interwar campaigns focused on the obvious immediate needs to a child. Food, shelter, water, and so on. However, they also largely focused on reuniting parents with their children that were sent away for their safety. With this came a larger issue; the denationalization of children. Children that were sent away during the Armenian Genocide were largely sent to to Turkey and learned Muslim practices. Efforts to reclaim these children and to “renationalize” them were crucial to these international organizations. After World War 1, children were exiled and then reclaimed again for “their own good”. However, “all the improvements in a child’s life may dwindle down to nothing when faced with the fact that it has to leave the family to get to them”. (18) This was the major issue governments were missing. People believed that the memories and possible psychological traumas would be minimal as long as the were physically safe and healthy, but we know today that that is not true.

This idea changed dramatically after the Spanish Civil War. While the aftermath left the Spaniards wanting their children back from exile in France to be reassimilated back into Spanish culture, the individual’s psyche was beginning to be taken into account. These loyalist approaches to repatriation wouldn’t go away until well after World War 2 when identities were no longer defined by where they came from, but rather where they called home. Still, strides were being made to get these “lost” children psychological help along with their material needs. Light was now shedding on the moral and social risks of a divided family and after World War II, in an effort to move forward from the depths of depravity found in the Nazi Regime, and to reclaim democracy, the child’s individual welfare was now being focused on far more than the countries desire for a unified nation. Each war and genocide set the the foundation for new improvements in humanitarian efforts.

Much of this content relates to Hoffman’s ideas on social welfare and the modern state. Children were the objects of popular politics all throughout the first half of the 20th century. After they were exiled for their safety, the children were sought after to become assimilated members of a homogenous society. Hoffman’s main idea is that social welfare is for the good of country far more than for the good of individual. The countries wanted a healthy person to increase economic output in an industrial society. Industrial society was the modern state. In the book the reader learns that the countries sent away their children and then brought them back for family stability which was a core value of Europe at this time. Leaders believed that children wouldn’t grow up to be functioning members of society if they don’t have a normal family upbringing. Eventually, they moved to a practice in which these agencies and governments did what was psychologically best for the child. This reconstruction of childhoods mimicked the reconstruction of Europe itself.

Lost Children in Post War Europe

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In Lost Children : Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II, Tara Zahra explains the changes in attitudes towards the rehabilitation of children in Europe after the two major world wars. Millions of children were displaced as a result of the Armenian Genocide, World War I, and the Mexican Revolution, and World War II. In order to combat the mass orphanage, organizations such as the ARA (American Relief Association) and the IRO (International Refugee Organization) were created to feed, house, psychologically rehabilitate, and provide welfare to the displaced, wandering new “wolf children” of Europe. (4)

The welfare systems that were implemented to save children in Lost Children: Recontructing Europe’s Families after World War II revolved around psychological rehabilitation. According to Zahra, the social workers worked in the “best interest of the child, rather than any particular agenda”. (17) There is a stark contrast between the European post war welfare system than the one in an industrializing Russia, which was described by Hoffman as “a set of reciprocal obligations between the state and its citizens, rather than as a means to protect the dignity of the individuals”. (Hoffman, 19)

While programs such as the ARA and the IRO sought to bring stability to the individual emotionally and provide them with proper homes to rebuild European family life, the Russian welfare system was to serve as a catalyst for industrialization to catapult the nation into a modern era.

Children as a Special Category of Humanitarian Concern in Interwar Europe

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The introduction and first chapter of Tara Zahra’s Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families After World War I, presents a fascinating survey of changing attitudes towards children across Europe in the aftermath of the First World War. We learn, thanks to Zahra’s research on four humanitarian crises during the Interwar Period – the Armenian Genocide, the efforts of the American Relief Association in Eastern Europe, the tragedy of refugee families separated from one another in different countries, and the Spanish Civil War- how children came to earn special consideration in response to humanitarian crises and in European peoples’ general understanding of war and violence.

Early in the introduction, Zahra echoes the two texts we read by David L. Hoffman, which describe the demarcation of a social realm apart from the political and economic spheres in order to better respond to problems related to poverty, crime, and social unrest and how this shaped efforts to respond to the pressures of industrialization and the prospect of modern warfare through new means of categorizing and governing citizens. According to Hoffman, these developments stemmed from the gradual realization by European monarchs that their success as political figures and military strategists depended on their ability to cultivate a productive workforce, strong and able enough to respond to the industrial and military needs of the modern state. It would appear logical then, that children, the root of such a workforce, might have much to gain from this mentality. Zahra confirms this at the bottom of page nineteen, informing her readers that European children did in fact reap the benefits of the age’s changing mentality, thanks to increasingly “romantic” views amongst Europe’s middle classes that no longer saw children as another source of labor, but as future citizens, who should have time to play and develop their minds in preparation for this important role. As this new mentality gained more legitimacy, humanitarian and religious organizations began protesting child labor and the separation of children from their families.

It therefore comes as no surprise that children forced into lives as refugees during and after the First World War would arouse the passions of the liberal-minded European middle classes.  In each of the four cases cited above, those advocating humanitarian initiatives on behalf of children saw their plight as especially distressing. Following the Armenian Genocide, for instance, the League of Nations Commission for the Protection of Women and Children in the Near East set an important precedent by considering the recovery of lost children as an international moral imperative (Zahra, 30).

Zahra also reveals that these same humanitarian organizations and their supporters came to consider the fragmentation of the family unit as one of the worst atrocities wrought by war. This I found particularly interesting, as it affirmed Mazower’s contention that the Interwar Left and Right considered the family as “the natural, primary, and fundamental unit of society” (Mazower, 89). Zahra’s work also reminded me of Wilhelm Reich’s book on the relationship between sexual repression and fascism, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. In it, he identifies the family as “political reaction’s germ cell”, the product of an authoritarian society, and thus “the most important institution for its conservation” (Reich, 104-105). One might therefore find him or herself tempted to argue that the privileging of family rights in conjunction with those of the child over the rights of individual civilians left out of those categories might lead to a situation, visible in fascist states, in which there exist no rights external to those concerning the family’s right to protection from dissolution and decomposition.

“Chapaev” and “We Grow Out of Iron”: Industrialization and Revolutionary Thoughts

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In both “Chapaev” and “We Grow Out of Iron”, the authors are teaching the audience about industrialism and revolutionary thoughts. After the revolution in 1917, new thoughts on modernity emerged.

In Gastev’s poem, “We Grow Out of Iron”, symbols of factories and iron structures elude to society changes, both literal and metaphorically. Gastev describes the buildings are very large and indestructible. The author also describes them as ever-growing structures. After the revolution of 1917, new definitions of modernity emerged. Technology and industrialization became much more ominous. Gatev hints at this in the poem, “they demand yet greater strength”. Not only are the building actually growing taller, they are growing more powerful.

The poem also mentions the factory workers’ role in this emerging industrialization. As the factories grow stronger, so do the workers. They are taking on more tasks and their importance in industry is ever growing. With greater responsibility comes the workers’ feeling of inhumanity. The poem says, “My feet remain on the ground, but my head is above the building.” The author is teaching the audience the importance of factory workers in industry and modernity. The works have become “one with the building’s iron.” The revolution, as illustrated in “Chapaev”, is all about the congregation and rise of the working class.

The Russian Working Class

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Both “We Grow out of Iron” by Gastev and “Chapaev” by Furmanov dealt with the feelings of the working class during the Soviet takeover of Russia.

“We Grow out of Iron” is a propaganda poem glorifying hard work, an idea that was spread throughout the Soviet Union.  While this poem could be dismissed as a piece of propaganda, it is more than that.  Gastev was from the poor, working class.  Without the breaking down of the class system, he would most likely have never been able to write his poetry.  It makes sense that Gastev would love and support the Soviet Union because communism gave him a chance to be more than just a worker.  Unfortunately, during Stalin’s perversion of communist ideology, Gastev was killed.  But under idealistic communism, Gastev flourished.

In “Chapaev,” the main character, Fyodor, is a member of the working class, just like the author, Furmanov.  As an urban worker, Fyodor is skeptical of Chapaev because he is a peasant.  While Fyodor admires Chapaev, he is unsure of the peasants’ commitment to the Soviet cause.  He believes peasants are more likely to switch sides spontaneously than the urban workers.  Furmanov highlights the distinctions between the rural peasants and urban workers even more when it is revealed that the middle-aged Chapaev only recently learned to read.  The story deals with many stereotypes held by the urban workers about the peasants, such as peasants are backwards and uncontrollable.

Both Gastev and Furmanov write about the experience of urban workers at the beginning of the Soviet Union.  Both these authors show urban workers at the heart of the political upheaval in Russia as one ideology replaced another.