Genealogy and human heredity in Germany around 1900

Bernd Gausemeier
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin

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     Last modified: February 14, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/17/2005 9:00 AM in ROZH 105
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Abstract
Session: Genealogy, Pure Lines, and Radiation. Towards A Cultural History of Classical Genetics

In my presentation, I want to stress two aspects that constitute the crucial role of genealogy in the history of heredity. First, genealogy was not simply a means to visualize assumptions about certain hereditary phenomena. Rather, genealogical method structured the way human heredity was perceived and conceptualized. Second, through genealogy, the dimension of history entered the discourse about heredity and provided it with a higher significance and assertiveness.
All knowledge about human heredity is based on genealogy, but it was only in the 19th century that genealogy became the key method of hereditarianism. While the ‚classic’ aristocratic and bourgeois genealogy was a practice to represent the social status of a family, ‚new’ genealogy visualized the burdens of kinship, the transmission of mental deviances and diseases. Michel Foucault has argued that this change in the use of genealogy is related to a more fundamental shift: the transition from a social system based on descent and ‚blood’ to a regime observing and controlling reproduction. In other words, the new function of genealogy was an important aspect in the rise of eugenics.
My talk will discuss how ‚classic’ genealogy became transformed into a ‚biological’ method in Germany around 1900. I will specifically focus on the impact of historian Ottokar Lorenz, who published an influential handbook on ‚scientific genealogy’ in 1898. Lorenz criticized physicians and psychiatrists for their ignorance of genealogical methodology, a deficiency that often led to questionable assumptions about heredity. He also urged historians and sociologists to take scientific insights about heredity more seriously. To Lorenz, genealogy provided the basis for a new perspective on history that would emphasize the ‚biological’ dimension of social life, the production of the specific qualities of families, tribes and peoples. Rather than promoting it as an auxiliary method for eugenicists and for historians, he conceived genealogy as the interface between the social and the natural sciences.
Lorenz’ ideas were echoed both in the community of genealogists and among eugenic activists. The result was not only a dialogue between scientists and genealogists. After 1900, the call for new genealogical databases became a commonplace in the eugenic discourse. Collections of pedigrees and family histories were regarded as the starting point for a scientific study of human heredity, but also as a means for future eugenic control. The establishment of such collections provided a new institutional basis for eugenics. Moreover, it profoundly influenced the discourse about heredity and society. As individual pedigrees became arranged as a genealogical ‚network’, a new concept of population emerged: the term population was no longer restricted to the people living in a certain area at a certain time, it also comprised past generations– in effect, it was pictured as an organic ‚body’. Accordingly, the individual was more and more regarded as the representative of the ‚hereditary material’ gathered in his family.

Multiple Paper Session:
Other papers in this session:
Between Genetics and Biometry: Franz Boas’ Concept of a ‘Family Line’, 1890-1912
From Plant Breeding to Heredity. Clones and Pure Lines
Animal Breeding and its Influence on the Identity of Genetics
Towards a holistic understanding of the organism: The model organisms of German genetics in the twenties