Summary
Cofounder of German Rassenhygiene who opposed racist interpretations of it and support for Aryan supremacy, holding that class differences made more of an impact than racial ones, and who won the 1900 Krupp competition with Vererbung und Auslese (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.56).
Details
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The Krupp competition, presided over by Ernst Haeckel, sought to prove socialism and Darwinism incompatible; Franz Oppenheimer joined the chorus of critics of Schallmayer’s winning treatise (PDF p.56).
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Schallmayer linked Rassenhygiene with socialism, regarding capitalism and class privilege as detrimental to sexual selection (PDF p.56).
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In the controversy over his treatise he distinguished Rassenhygiene from social anthropology, preferred “Eugenik” or the singular “Rassehygiene”, and sought delineation of eugenics and public hygiene as independent disciplines under a “national biology” whose goal Rassenhygiene would determine; Oppenheimer accused him of rejecting Lamarck for Weismann out of ideology (PDF p.57-58).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Franz Oppenheimer, Rassenhygiene, Alfred Ploetz