Social Mendelism

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'Amir Teicher's wide-ranging and provocative history of Mendelism in the German-speaking world will bust the myth that it was Darwinian selectionism alone that provided scientific justifications for right-wing ideologies of racial purification.' Staffan Mueller-Wille, University of Cambridge 'Amir Teicher's lucid study demonstrates that, similar to the way in which Darwin's work gave rise to Social Darwinism, the research method based on Gregor Mendel's experiments became transformed into a general interpretive framework - which Teicher calls 'Social Mendelism' - that exerted a powerful influence on the German biosciences in the first half of the twentieth century.' Richard F. Wetzell, German Historical Institute Washington 'Revelatory.' Gregory Radick, Times Literary Supplement 'This ambitious and thoroughly researched book seeks to achieve nothing less than a major rethink of the intellectual background to Nazism.' Dan Stone, German Studies Review 'Teicher's seminal study shows how Mendelism played an essential role in the rise, development and radicalization of German racial hygiene. What has long been known in relation to Darwinism, Teicher elaborates in a differentiated argument for Mendelism: he provided a reservoir of images, metaphors and arguments from which National Socialists drew in order to scientifically legitimize their racial and sterilization policies. Teicher's narrative does not follow a straight path; no 'from Mendel to Hitler'. Rather, he repeatedly emphasizes the contradictions, polyvalences, and contingencies that determined the political use of Mendelism. It is precisely in this way that Teicher's study sharpens our view of the ambivalent and historically changing entanglements between science and ideology. (in German)' Pascal German, Rezensionsredakteur '... Teicher's study sharpens our view of the ambivalent and historically changing interrelationships between science and ideology.' Pascal Germann, NTM Journal of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine