Summary
Founder figure of German Rassenhygiene who coined the term, at first positively inclined towards Jews and miscegenation, who in 1911 cofounded a secret “Nordic Ring” within the German society for Rassenhygiene after his turn towards racial purity (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.54, p.56).
Details
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Franz Oppenheimer was at first positively inclined towards Rassenhygiene and full of praise for Ploetz, though he felt Ploetz overzealous in the centrality he attributed to the new theory (PDF p.54).
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Oppenheimer misquoted the title of Ploetz’s 1895 book as Die Züchtung unserer Rassen in place of Die Tüchtigkeit unsrer Rasse und der Schutz der Schwachen, as Peretz’s footnote records (PDF p.54).
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Ploetz linked Rassenhygiene with socialism, regarding capitalism and class privilege as detrimental to sexual selection (PDF p.56).
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At the first Soziologentag (1910) his talk on the terms “race” and “society” met great reservations; Tönnies countered with Moses Mendelssohn and Goldscheid asked whether society would have been better off if Mendelssohn had been selected out (PDF p.81). Ploetz sought cooperation between eugenics and social policy through primacy of the biological over the economic perspective (PDF p.58).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Franz Oppenheimer, Rassenhygiene, Wilhelm Schallmayer