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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2019
The introduction of blindness into the Sterilization Law passed by the Nazis in July 1933, was exceptional, even by the standards of the time. Prior sterilization bills had focused on mental and nervous disorders, and they almost always excluded blindness as a category. The wish to sterilize the blind cannot be explained solely as stemming from the eugenic or economic threat that they allegedly posed to German society; such threats were acknowledged to be marginal, and they paled in comparison to the perceived menace attributed to the so-called feeble-minded and mentally ill. What made blindness of special significance for Nazi lawmakers was its disciplinary status among geneticists as an indisputable demonstration of the validity of the laws of heredity to human maladies. Together with two additional disease categories—deafness and Huntington's chorea—blindness provided Nazi legislators with scientific legitimization that helped pave the way for the sterilization of the mentally ill. For the blind, it was therefore not the fanaticism of the Nazis but rather their aspiration to ground their policy in biological teaching that ultimately proved fateful.
Sogar gemessen an den Standards der damaligen Zeit war die Einbeziehung der Blindheit im von den Nationalsozialisten im Juli 1933 erlassenen Sterilisationsgesetz außergewöhnlich. Frühere Sterilisationsgesetze waren auf mentale und nervlich bedingte Störungen fokussiert gewesen und hatten Blindheit als Kategorie fast immer ausgeschlossen. Das Bedürfnis Blinde zu sterilisieren kann nicht einfach dadurch erklärt werden, dass diese angeblich eine eugenische oder wirtschaftliche Bedrohung für die deutsche Gesellschaft darstellten; man gab ja zu, dass derartige Bedrohungen marginal waren und in keinem Vergleich zu der durch sogenannte Schwachsinnige und psychisch Kranke empfundenen Gefahr stand. Die besondere Bedeutung der Blindheit für die nationalsozialistischen Gesetzesgeber beruhte auf deren Status innerhalb der Genetik, da man durch Blinde die Vererbungsgesetze bezüglich menschlicher Krankheiten unanfechtbar demonstrieren konnte. Zusammen mit zwei weiteren Krankheitskategorien – Taubheit und Huntingtonsche Chorea (Veitstanz)—lieferte Blindheit den NS-Gesetzgebern die wissenschaftliche Legitimation, um den Weg zur Sterilisation der psychisch Kranken zu ebnen. Den Blinden wurde daher letztendlich nicht der Fanatismus der Nationalsozialisten, sondern deren Bemühen, ihre Politik durch biologische Erkenntnisse zu rechtfertigen, zum Verhängnis.
Research for this paper began when I was a fellow at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University. I thank Shai Lavi, Hagai Boaz, Amos Morris-Reich, and the participants of the center's colloquium for their instructive feedback. I also thank Sarah Mandel for her proofreading, as well as Andrew I. Port and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
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13 Boeters's letters to the Ministry of Interior are in BArch R1501/126248. For his public campaign, see BArch R 86/2374.
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26 See Bock, Zwangssterilisation, 230–46, 303; Richter, Blindheit, 154–70; Harmsen, Hans, “The German Sterilization Act of 1933,” Eugenics Review 46, no. 4 (1955): 227–32Google ScholarPubMed; Friedlander, Origins, 29-39. Also see the series of regional and institutional studies on the implementation of the sterilization policy, including Susanne Doetz, “Alltag und Praxis der Zwangssterilisation. Die Berliner Universitätsfrauenklinik unter Walter Stoeckel 1942–1944” (Berlin-Brandenburg: be.bra, 2010), 46–48; Christiane Rothmaler, Sterilisationen nach dem ‘Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses’ vom 14. Juli 1933: Eine Untersuchung zur Tätigkeit des Erbgesundheitsgerichtes und zur Durchführung des Gesetzes in Hamburg in der Zeit zwischen 1934 und 1944 (Husum: Matthiesen, 1991).
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61 BArch R86/2372, “Zur Frage des Austausches von Gesundheitszeugnissen vor der Eheschliessung,” Feb. 26, 1920. See also Berliner Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene, Über den gesetzlichen Austausch von Gesundheitszeugnissen vor der Eheschließung und rassenhygienische Eheverbote (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1917).
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70 A later draft sterilization law in Britain contained the general phrase “grave physical disability deemed to be inheritable.” See Steinwallner, Bruno, “Rassenhygienische Gesetzgebung und Maßnahmen im Ausland,” in Fortschritte der Erbpathologie, Rassenhygiene und ihrer Grenzgebiete, ed. Schottky, John and Verschuer, Otmar Frhr. von (Leipzig: Thieme 1937), 222–23Google Scholar; Reilly, Philip R., The Surgical Solution (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Trombley, Stephen, The Right to Reproduce (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988)Google Scholar; also see the British Voluntary Sterilization Bill in Eugenics Review 27, no. 2 (1935): 136–46. The 1934 Polish sterilization bill copied the German categories, but, in later discussions on eugenic measures, those categories vanished and the discussion returned to a focus on the mentally “deficient,” psychopaths, criminals, and alcoholics. See Gawin, Magdalena, “Polish Psychiatrists and Eugenic Sterilization during the Interwar Period,” International Journal of Mental Health 36, no. 1 (2007): 67–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
71 Researchers are generally in agreement that those deemed mentally deficient and “unproductive” were the prime target of the Nazi “euthanasia” campaign, and that the deaf or blind were rarely targeted, unless such a disability was accompanied by another (mental) one. This supports the main argument of this article. Gabriel Richter and Horst Biesold nevertheless mention particular cases where blind or deaf individuals were murdered, presumably only because of the latter conditions. See Richter, Gabriel, “Blindheit und Eugenik—Zwischen Widerstand und Integration,” in Blinde unterm Hakenkreuz—Erkennen, Trauern, Begegnen, vol. 8, ed. Jaedicke, Martin and Schmidt-Block, Wolfgang (Marburg: DVBS, 1991), 16–34Google Scholar (esp. 28); Richter, Gabriel, “Zwischen Widerstand und Integration,” in Aussondern—Steriliseren—Liquidieren. Die Verfolgung Behinderter im Nationalsozialismus, ed. Rudnick, Matrin (Berlin: Spiess, 1990), 176–88Google Scholar; Biesold, Horst, Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
