Wettbewerb der Nationen: Industriespionage als Lehrfach an der Militärakademie

Das Leben der Menschen und der Nationen als permanenter Wettbewerb: Sozialdarwinistische Ideologie ist bis heute prägend in Wirtschaftspolitik und internationalen Beziehungen.

Clausewitz lehrte, Krieg sei die Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln. Im Umkehrschluss ist auch die Auffassung verbreitet, Wirtschaftspolitik sei das Führen von Krieg mit anderen Mitteln - mit dem gleichen Ziel, nämlich survival of the fittest; Überleben des "tauglichsten" Volkes

 

Es hat daher eine gewisse Logik und kann in der Tradition von Sozialdarwinismus und Geopolitik gesehen werden, wenn an einer Militärakademie das Fach Competitive Intelligence angeboten wird.

• (Zu Geopolitik und ihren Wurzeln in Eugenik und Sozialdarwinismus siehe auch Stichwort "Geopolitik" auf diesem Blog; z.B. Posts "Eugenik und Geopolitik: Die Forderung nach Raum und Ressourcen für Völker mit vermeintlich besseren Genen" und "Eugenisches Denken: Demokratie als 'Diktatur der Mittelmäßigkeit'" 
   http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/05/geopolitik-und-eugenik-die-forderung.html;
  http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/06/eugenisches-denken-demokratie-als.html)

 

Wer genauer wissen will, was man in einem solchen Fach lernt, kann sich bei der American Military University um Teilnahme an dem online Kurs Competitive Intelligence bewerben.

Competitive Intelligence

an der American Military University
http://www.amu.apus.edu/lp2/competitive-intelligence/graduate-certificate.htm
"The online Graduate Certificate in Competitive Intelligence will help students in assessing the application of intelligence studies processes and procedures to the commercial business environment."


Im Titel habe ich das Wort "Industriespionage" verwendet, und darum geht es auch (natürlich nur, nehme ich mal an, um deren Abwehr). Aber das Wort Intelligence in der Bedeutung von "Spionage" ist im Englischen neutral, hat nicht den negative Beiklang wie "Spionage". Competitive ist "im Wettbewerb stehend" oder "konkurrenzfähig" und bezieht sich hier, wie aus der Kursbeschreibung hervorgeht, auf wirtschaftliche Konkurrenz.
Als eine möglichst wertungsfreie, wenn auch sperrige Übersetzung schlage ich vor:

- Nachrichtendienstliche Tätigkeit im Wirtschaftswettbewerb

In dem Zusammenhang auch interessant:

Die Idee vom Rüstungswettbewerb als "Tauglichkeitstest" der Nationen.

• Siehe z.B. Zitat von Gordon England, wonach nicht Terrorismus, sondern der Verlust der Welt-Führerschaft in Wissenschaft und Technologie die größte Bedrohung darstellt : “The greatest long‐term threat to U.S. national security is not terrorists wielding a nuclear or biological weapon, but the erosion of America’s place as a world leader in science and technology.” http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2013/11/koalitionsverhandlungen.html

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Die Weltwirtschaft als Nullsummenspiel – Wettbewerb ist alles

„1,2 Millarden Inder, die wollen auch gute Arbeit leisten. Und damit wir besser sind als die, brauchen wir Kraft.“

Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel
eingespielt in
heute-show - Wahlkrampfzeit mit Angela (20.4.2012) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXJ7CauDpq8
ab ca. 04:17


Wettbewerb und Strukturreformen

“Auf der anderen Seite ist die politische Erfahrung, dass für politische Strukturreformen oft Druck gebraucht wird. Zum Beispiel war auch in Deutschland die Arbeitslosigkeit auf eine Zahl von fünf Millionen Arbeitslosen angestiegen, bevor die Bereitschaft vorhanden war, Strukturreformen durchzusetzen. Meine Schlussfolgerung ist also: Wenn Europa heute in einer schwierigen Situation ist, müssen wir heute Strukturreformen durchführen, damit wir morgen besser leben können.”

Angela Merkel kritisch zitiert auf
http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=15967

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Die Welt aus der Sicht der NATO: Eine Arena globalen Wettbewerbs

Geopolitik oder "Eine Welt"?

Policy Workshop on NATO in an Era of Global Competition
February 03, 2014

The year 2014 will be pivotal for NATO as it draws down from the mission in

Afghanistan, prepares for the 2014 summit in Wales, and grapples with new

political challenges to the transatlantic community, from the crisis in Ukraine

to the ongoing Syrian civil war. While NATO remains a manifestation of the

values and commitments espoused by the transatlantic community since its

inception in 1949, it must overcome significant internal obstacles to remain a

relevant and effective institution, including a dearth of political and

financial support from its members and dwindling capabilities.

 On February 3, the Atlantic Council and the Norwegian Institute for Defence

Studies (IFS) convened top subject-matter experts in Oslo, Norway, for a policy

workshop to determine how NATO can best shape its 2014 Summit agenda given

NATO’s internal challenges and the current state of transatlantic relations.

Participants discussed NATO’s role in Europe’s tumultuous neighborhood, from the

Middle East and North Africa to Ukraine, ways for NATO to bolster its

capabilities in an era of declining defense budgets, and how NATO can transform

to operate in a globalized security environment through the partnership

framework.

This event is part of the Atlantic Council and IFS's project on NATO in an Era

of Global Competition, an 18-month effort undertaken to address the role of NATO

and the broader transatlantic community in the face of emerging security

challenges, global power shifts, and new disruptive technologies.

This policy workshop served as the foundation for the project’s third public

conference, The Future of NATO and the Transatlantic Relationship, which will

take place on March 19 in Oslo, Norway. 

http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/events/past-events/policy-workshop-on-nato-in-an-era-of-global-competition
  

• Siehe auch den Post ueber ideologische Zusammenhaenge zwischen Eugenik, Sozialdarwinismus und Geopolitik
 http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/05/geopolitik-und-eugenik-die-forderung.html

_______

Aus Wikipedia ueber das Buch

Bekenntnisse eines Economic Hit Man
Inhalt[Bearbeiten]

Die Publikation befasst sich mit der Geschichte der Karriere des Autors bei der Beraterfirma Chas. T. Main (heute Teil der Parsons Corporation). Bevor er durch dieses Unternehmen angestellt wurde, führte er ein Bewerbungsgespräch mit der US-amerikanischen National Security Agency (NSA). Perkins behauptet, dieses Interview sei im Endeffekt eine unabhängige Sicherheitsüberprüfung gewesen, die zu seiner anschließenden Einstellung durch Einar Greve, einem Mitarbeiter der Firma (und angeblichen NSA-Verbindungsmann, was Greve allerdings bestreitet), führte, um, nach eigener Beschreibung, ein „Economic Hit Man“ (EHM) zu werden.

Laut seinem Buch bestand Perkins' Funktion darin, die politische und wirtschaftliche Führungselite unterentwickelter Staaten dazu zu bringen, enorme Entwicklungshilfekredite von Institutionen wie der Weltbank und der United States Agency for International Development (USAID) aufzunehmen. Belastet mit riesigen Schulden, die sie nie zurückzuzahlen erhoffen konnten, waren diese Länder gezwungen, sich bei den verschiedensten Gelegenheiten dem politischen Druck der USA zu beugen. Perkins beschreibt, wie die Entwicklungsländer effektiv politisch neutralisiert wurden und ihre Einkommens- und Vermögensdisparität (Gini-Koeffizient) immer weiter heraufgetrieben wurde. Diese Strategie schädigte auf Dauer die Wirtschaft dieser Staaten. Perkins erzählt von seinen Treffen mit verschiedenen prominenten Persönlichkeiten, unter anderen Graham Greene und Omar Torrijos.

Der Autor beschreibt die Rolle eines EHM wie folgt:
„Economic hit men (EHMs) sind hochbezahlte Profis, die Länder rund um den Erdball um Billionen von Dollars betrügen. Sie schleusen Geld von der Weltbank und der U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), sowie anderer Auslands-„hilfs“-Organisationen in die Kassen großer Konzerne und die Taschen einiger reicher Familien, die die natürlichen Ressourcen der Erde kontrollieren. Ihre Werkzeuge schließen gefälschte Bilanzen, gefälschte Wahlen, Provisionen, Erpressung, Sex und Mord ein. Sie spielen ein Spiel, das so alt ist wie der Imperialismus, das jedoch in Zeiten der Globalisierung neue und furchtbare Dimensionen angenommen hat.“

Das Nachwort der englischen Auflage 2006 enthält eine Kritik des derzeitigen Schuldenerlasses der dritten Welt durch die G8-Staaten. Perkins beklagt, dass die vorgeschlagenen Bedingungen für diesen Schuldenerlass diese Länder zwingen, ihre Gesundheits-, Bildungs-, Energieversorgungs-, Wasser- und andere Infrastrukturen an Privatkonzerne zu verkaufen. Diese Länder müssten auch ihre Subventionen für einheimische Betriebe einstellen, andererseits aber die Weiterführung der Subventionen an einige G8-Betriebe durch die USA und andere G8-Staaten akzeptieren, außerdem die Errichtung von Handelsbarrieren auf Importe, die G8-Industrien bedrohen. Die Ereignisse in Bolivien und Tansania werden als Beispiele der Effekte dieser vorgeschlagenen Bedingungen angeführt. […]

Weblinks [Bearbeiten]

Offizielle Website mit Anmerkungen des Verlegers Steven Piersanti (PDF; 107 kB)

• Verlagswebsite zur deutschen Ausgabe
• Schakale und Sklaven, Rezension von Barbara Jentzsch im Freitag, 8. April 2005
• „Ich war ein Wirtschaftskiller“, Interview von Stephan Kosch in der tageszeitung, 9. Juli 2005
• A hit man repents, Artikel von Gary Younge im Guardian, 28. Januar 2006
• Im Dienst der Wirtschaftsmafia, Phoenix, Sendetermin Mittwoch, 2. Januar 2013, 23.55 Uhr

(Zuletzt geändert am 31. März 2013)

_______

Oel-Vertraege zwischen Staaten und privaten Investoren

Aus

Open OilOil Contract: How to Read and Understand a Petroleum Contracts
© Tim Boykett, Marta Peirano, Simone Boria, Heather Kelley, Elisabeth Schimana, Andreas Dekrout. Rachel OReilly 2012.

Foreword

From now until the time you finish this sentence, another 5,000 barrels of oil will have come out of the ground. Or 10,000 barrels by the end of this one, worth about a million dollars on world markets today. Suppose we created a World Oil Production Index (WOPI) as a measure of money, like a light year in distance. WOPI would equal a spacious Central Park apartment in a minute, the most expensive skyscraper ever built, Burj Khalifa, in a morning, and the net worth of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in two weeks.
Or, alternatively, WOPI would surpass the GDP of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country of 70 million people, in a day and a half, and the entire annual aid budget to Africa in four days. It would, in fact, take about two weeks of WOPI each year to eliminate absolute poverty among the 1.3 billion people around the world who subsist on less than $1.25 a day each. It's not news of course that oil generates a lot of money. But it's good to get a handle on just how much.
It is petroleum contracts that express how this money is split and who makes what profits, just as it is the contracts that determine who manages operations and how issues such as the environment, local economic development, and community rights are dealt with. The share price of ExxonMobil, the question of who carries responsibility for Deepwater Horizon, whether Uganda will be able to stop importing petrol, and how much it costs to heat and light homes in millions of homes these are issues which depend directly on clauses in the contracts signed between the governments of the world and the oil companies.
For most of the 150 years of oil production, these contracts have remained hidden, nested in a broader secrecy that surrounded all aspects of the industry. Governments claimed national security prerogatives, companies said commercial sensitivity precluded making them available. But the last few years have seen the emergence of the the idea that these contracts are of such high public interest that they transcend normal considerations of confidentiality in business, and should be published. A few governments and companies have published contracts. Academic institutions such as the University of Dundee in the UK and NGOs such as the Revenue Watch Institute are just now, at the end of 2012, beginning to collect the contracts that are in the public domain into databases searchable over the Internet.
Contract transparency is the natural next stage of the transparency movement. The initiatives which began in the 1990s around 'Resource Curse', leading to the creation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative in 2002, have succeded in opening up a public conversation. Governments and companies now acknowledge the importance of openness and ethical business. CSR was born to counter 'Blood Diamonds'. But there is as yet little systematic public understanding of how these titanic industries actually work. Activists and journalists sometimes penetrate dark corners and uncover kickbacks and secret deals, and occasionally trigger a public outcry that effects change. But public suspicion remains high around the world, fueled largely by this secrecy. In dozens of countries around the world public debate discussion continues with the main documents at the heart of this industry remaining absent.
Casual rhetoric about how "the government" or "the state" is being so secretive is not helpful because it misidentifies and actually understates the degree of dysfunctionality and asymmetry of information that can exist. This is often "deep state" stuff, belonging to a world of aides and special advisors with illdefined roles, where the regular apparatus of the state can also be out of the loop. In one country, senior diplomats in its foreign ministry lack the most basic understanding of the industry that generates 90 percent of its revenues and governs relations with its neighbours, with whom it shares sizeable fields. In another, the finance minister himself has been denied access to the petroleum contracts which determine how much revenue he is supposed to collect from international oil companies and others. In a third country a bid round went bad, and contracts were delayed for two years, because a phone call to clarify basic details wasn't returned. Ministers of the economy, planning and environment are rarely consulted about how contracts can integrate into broader government policy.
And yet, because of the pioneering move to publish by some governments and companies, the chance now exists to begin to create public understanding of petroleum contracts, based on those that exist in the public domain. This book is a first attempt to rise to that opportunity. We aim to reach at least ten thousand people around the world who may be engaged in the industry, or in governance of or transparency activism around it, but who may not have had the chance to gain professional exposure to petroleum contracts and the issues of how they are actually negotiated. We hope they will include people in the public and private sectors of 50 countries, journalists and civil servants and local business communities as well as promoting a broader understanding of the negotiating process within the companies themselves.
The sections of the book are intended to lead the nonspecialist reader through a logical sequence in understanding contracts. Section One sets the stage with background context. Section Two, who the players are, establishes the formal parties to a petroleum contract and the normal provisions of who does what and who decides what according to the contract. Section Three, 'The Money', goes to the heart of the negotiation and deals with all the different revenue streams and tools that go into constructing ever more complex financial arrangements.
Then we devote two sections to subjects which are handled in contracts but often in passing and at the last minute. Section Four deals with the linkages between the petroleum industry and economic development as a whole in the producing country, as dealt with in the contract, while Section Five looks at clauses relating to health, safety and environmental protection. Finally, in Section Six, Lawyers Yammering On, we look at pure legal aspects, dispute and arbitration procedures.
We quote liberally from a family of petroleum contracts throughout the book that come from eight countries Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya and Timor Leste. They were selected to represent various structures in contracts, stages of development of petroleum industry and most of all because they are in the public domain. Other contracts are referred to from time to time.
This book has been written in five days from start to finish, using the Booksprint technique pioneered by Adam Hyde. I am writing this foreword as its last entry on a Friday afternoon at Schloss Neuhasen little more than 100 hours after we sat down to storyboard it. This is both a source of pride and our first and last defence when our colleagues and the broader community point out inaccuracies, gaps and other defects, as we hope they will and encourage them to do.
The Booksprint is a collaborative writing technique of astonishing power in which colleagues constantly brainstorm, write, edit and copyedit each other in a workflow that somehow manages to combine high fluidity with structure. But inevitably in a process of such speed there will be uneveness and difference in tone and perhaps, at the margins, in substance, between one section and another. It is a work of collective authorship published under the Creative Commons license, but that does not mean that every one of us, or the affiliations we represent, subscribes to every statement made. This book is more team work than group think.
The writers of this book are: Peter Eigen, founder of Transparency International and founding chair of EITI; Cindy Kroon from the World Bank Institute; Herbert M'cleod from Sierra Leone; Susan Maples, Office of the Legal Adviser to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; Nurlan Mustafayev from the legal affairs department at SOCAR, Azerbaijan's state oil company; Jay Park, a lawyer from Norton Rose; Geoff Peters; Nadine Stiller from the German agency for international cooperation GIZ; Lynn Turyatemba from the NGO International Alert in Uganda; Johnny West, founder of the OpenOil consultancy; and Sebastian Winkler, Director Europe for Global Footprint Network. All work on the book was pro bono or mandated by the organisations we work for. If you want to hear each of us in our own words talking about the project, go to http://openoil.net/booksprint
Adam Hyde of SourceFabric (Booktype) and BookSprints.net facilitated the Book Sprint and Lynn Stewart designed the book and its art work. First readers, and copy editors were the OpenOil team of Steffi Heerwig, Robert Malies, Zara Rahman and Lucy Wallwork.
We received financial assistance to write this book from: Internews Europe, a media development organisation based in London; Petroleum Economist magazine (with no editorial input our views and mistakes remain our own); and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
We want this book to be the start of a broader public conversation about petroleum contracts. It will be a living document, subject to constant critique on the Web and periodic review. Anyone can download it at any time, print and sell it, and adapt it. Please bear in mind, though, that because our work is Creative Commons license and available to everyone, the terms of copyright say that you inherit the terms of that license and any work you base on ours will legally be under Creative Commons license too.
We aim for the book to become the basis for localised versions which take a look at petroleum contracts country by country. There is no reason why, three years from now, there shouldn't be, for every country in the world with a petroleum industry (or hoping to develop one), an editorially independent and technically informed book put together by a group of sympathetic but objective professionals from a range of disciplines which analyses that country's core contracts, available to the public free of charge. We would be delighted to help make that happen with anyone in a producing country who has an interest.
We also aim to make it the basis for training courses, ported to all relevant locations and languages, which bring a fundamental and holistic understanding of petroleum contracts to a much wider audience than has had the chance to engage with them so far.
It is our belief that even though these contracts were not written with the public in mind, with a little effort they can be understood to a level which enables real, mature and informed public discussion. We hope that after reading this book you will agree.

Johnny West
Founder OpenOil.net

[…]

What is a petroleum contract?

Experts estimate that for a large natural resouce extraction project, there will be well over 100 contracts to build, operate, and finance it all of which could fall under the broad category of 'petroleum contract'. There may also be well over a 100 parties involved, including:
governments and their national oil companies (NOCs), e.g. Gazprom, Petronas international oil companies (IOCs), e.g. BP, Exxon, Chevron, CNOOC private banks and public lenders, e.g. JP Morgan, World Bank engineering firms, drilling companies & rig operators, e.g. Halliburton, Schlumberger, Technip transportation, refining and trading companies, e.g. Hess, Glencore, Trafigura, Koch Industries
...and many more

Among these many contracts, the most important is the one between the government and the IOC and it is this conract that will be addressed in this book. All of the other contracts must be consistent with and depend on this contract; these might be collectively referred to as "subsidiary", "auxillary" or "ancillary" contracts.

This contract is most commonly referred to by the industry as a "Host Government Contract" because it is a contract between a Government (on the behalf of the nation and its people) and an oil company or companies (that are being hosted). It is through this contract that the host government legally grants rights to oil companies to conduct "petroleum operations". This contract appears in countries throughout the world under many names:

Petroleum Contract
Exploration & Producting Agreement (E&P)
Exploration & Exploitation Contract
Concession License Agreement
Petroleum Sharing Agreement (PSA)
Production Sharing Contract (PSA)

http://openoil.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/oil-contracts-v1-nov-3.pdf

Alles halb und schwankend

Ein beliebtes Hitler-Zitat bei Neonazis ist diese Stelle aus “Mein Kampf”:

All diese Verfallserscheinungen sind im letzten Grunde nur Folge des Mangels einer bestimmten, gleichmäßig anerkannten Weltanschauung sowie der daraus sich ergebenen allgemeinen Unsicherheit in der Beurteilung und Stellungnahme zu den einzelnen großen Fragen dieser Zeit. Daher ist auch, angefangen bei der Erziehung, alles halb und schwankend, scheut die Verantwortung und endet so in feiger Dummheit selbst bei erkannter Schäden. Das Humanitätsgedusel ist Mode […]
- Siehe z.B. http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/05/feindbild-gutmensch-co-ein-klassiker.html

Daran wurde ich erinnert, als ich in “Psychologie Heute” (Heft 35, 2013) einen Artikel las, der sich mit der Frage beschäftigt, welche Fähigkeiten wir für den Umgang mit Veränderung und Ungewissheit brauchen. Dem “Halben und Schwankenden” zu entkommen, in einer unsicheren, sich rapide verändernden Welt über hundertprozentige “Sicherheit in der Beurteilung und Stellungnahme zu den einzelnen grossen Fragen dieser Zeit” zu verfügen – das entspricht einem tiefen menschlichen Bedürfnis.

In dem Artikel “Risikokompetenz – Mit Unsicherheit sicher leben können – legt Ursula Nuber dar, wie wichtig es ist, mit einem gewissen Mass an Unsicherheit umgehen zu lernen. Stichwort ”Ambiguitätstoleranz”. Sie konzentriert sich dabei auf das (Nicht-) Aushaltenkönnen von Unsicherheiten im Alltagsleben, gibt aber auch Beispiele aus der grossen Politik.  Sie geht nicht speziell auf die Anziehungskraft geschlossener Weltbilder und Heilsversprechungen politischer und religiöser Demagogen ein, aber der Artikel vermittelt eine Vorstellung vom Thema ”Ambiguitätstoleranz” und weckt Interesse daran.
Siehe auch Stichwort “Demagoge” auf diesem Blog; z.B. http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2012/09/zum-verhaltnis-von-wahrheit-und.html

Welche Anforderungen an ”Ambiguitätstoleranz” das Leben in der heutigen Zeit stellt, davon vermittelt z,B. das Buch “Arrival City” von Doug Saunders eine Vorstellung; siehe auf diesem Blog
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2012/08/arrival-city-zum-beispiel-berlin.html

Einige Zitate aus dem Artikel in Psychologie Heute möchte ich hier noch einstellen; im Moment komme ich nicht dazu. Für diejenigen, die schon jetzt mehr dazu lesen möchten, empfehle ich, das im Zeitschriftenhandel leicht erhältliche Heft zu besorgen (7,50 EUR), oder dem Stichwort “Ambiguitätstoleranz” mit einer Internet-Suche nachzugehen.

_____


Im gleichen Heft

"Skeptisches Denken - Zweifeln ist fruchtbar" von Andreas Urs Sommer:

"Zweifeln ist laestig, wir haben es gerne eindeutig. Wer unsicher ist oder zoegert, bekommt Probleme, den kritisches Innehalten ist nicht erwuenscht, wo Entschlossenheit als Tugend gilt. Fuer den Philosophiehistoriker Andreas Urs Sommer ist eine gesunde Portion Skepsis jedoch wichtig fuer die persoenliche und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung."


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Geschäftemacherei mit Hitler

Ein Brite will den Deutschen Auszüge aus Hitlers Werk angedeihen lassen. Mit Nazi-Werbung hat das wenig zu tun, eher mit Geschäftstüchtigkeit.

taz.de 17. 01. 2012
Hitler geht immer. Peter McGee kennt sich da aus. Der britische Verleger hat schon diverse Schmuddeltexte wie Faksimiles des Völkischen Beobachters oder der NS-Zeitung Der Angriff, jeweils editiert von renommierten, aber offenbar geldgeilen Historikern, unters deutsche Volk gebracht. Nun also Adolf höchstpersönlich.         
Kommentierte Auszüge seines Bestsellers "Mein Kampf" sollen noch in diesem Monat an den Kiosken zum Verkauf angeboten werden. Ist das nicht furchtbar? Steht zu befürchten, dass nun Neonazis und solche, die es werden wollen, mit neuen Argumenten und Phrasen munitioniert werden, auf dass ihre ekelhafte Bewegung weiter wächst und gedeiht? [...]        
Tatsächlich entbehrt der zweibändige Hitler-Wälzer nicht nur jeder Logik, er ist auch grauenhaft schlecht geschrieben: "Der schwarzhaarige Judenjunge lauert stundenlang, satanische Freude in seinem Gesicht, auf das ahnungslose Mädchen, das er mit seinem Blut schändet und damit seinem, des Mädchens, Volke raubt", heißt es da etwa. Gehts noch primitiver? 
Dass das Buch eine hohe Auflage erreichte und Hitler zum Millionär machte, ist vor allem der Tatsache zu schulden, dass es bei der Heirat dem jungen Glück im NS-Staat kostenfrei von den Standesämtern überreicht wurde. Dass heute jemand wegen solcher Sätze zum Antisemiten wird, kann man wohl ausschließen - es sei denn, er war vorher schon einer.         
Die Rechte an "Mein Kampf" liegen seit 1948 beim Freistaat Bayern. Das Bundesland hat bisher alle Versuche, das Buch in Deutschland erneut aufzulegen, erfolgreich verhindert. Eine Veröffentlichung der Schrift gilt als Wiederverbreitung nationalsozialistischer Propaganda. Das war in den Nachkriegsjahren durchaus verständlich. Doch 2015, nach der 70-jährigen Schutzfrist, laufen diese Rechte ab. Gegen Peter McGee prüft das bayerische Finanzministerium derzeit juristische Schritte.       

http://www.taz.de/!85832/
        

Neues Sarrazin-Buch: Gutmenschen sind Terroristen (Tugendterroristen)

Umzingelt von Gutmenschen und Tugendterroristen 

 

“Im Juni 2002 referierte Volksanwalt Ewald Stadler im Rahmen einer Sonnwendfeier, „dass die gnadenlosen Gutmenschen und Tugendterroristen, die heute Wehrmachtsausstellungen gestalten“, behaupten, „Österreich sei 1945 befreit worden“. „1945 – und das ist zur Staatsideologie geworden – sind wir angeblich vom Faschismus und von der Tyrannei befreit worden.“ Zu dieser Feier hatte die niederösterreichische Landtagsabgeordnete Barbara Rosenkranz und ihr Gatte Horst eingeladen, der sich Anfang der 90er Jahre in der rechtsextremen Szene bewegte.”  

Quelle:
Richard Meisel unter Mitarbeit von Kai Themel: Rechtsextremismus

In der Reihe “Politik und Zeitgeschehen”;  Inhaltliche Koordination: Peter Autengruber

© 2011 by Verlag des Österreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes GmbH, Wien
Gefunden über www.voegb.at

Endlich Widerstand gegen den Tugendterror /
Begeisterung bei "Politically Incorrect":

Professor Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt:
Die Leute, die so demonstrativ ihren Heiligenschein polieren, tun das ja nicht aus Nächstenliebe, sondern weil sie dadurch hohes Ansehen, hohe Rangpositionen, also auch Macht, gewinnen können – früher als Held, heute als Tugendheld.

Sarrazin ist für mich einer der wenigen echten Helden, die Deutschland momentan hat!"

Höchste Zeit, dass dieses Thema in dieser Gesinnungsdemokratie auf dem Tisch kommt!!!

http://www.pi-news.net/2013/12/thilo-sarrazin-der-neue-tugendterror/

Anlass des Jubels ist diese Pressemeldung:

"Der frühere Berliner Finanzsenator Thilo Sarrazin (SPD) hat ein neues Buch
geschrieben. Das Werk mit dem Titel „Der neue Tugendterror. Über die Grenzen der Meinungsfreiheit in Deutschland“ soll Ende Februar kommenden Jahres erscheinen, teilte die Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt (DVA) am Montag mit. Auf rund 350 Seiten analysiere Sarrazin den Meinungskonformismus in der Bundesrepublik und setze sich mit den „14 vorherrschenden Denk- und Redeverboten unserer Zeit“ auseinander… "


_______


Das Wort "Tugendterror" ist natürlich schon längst von der Werbebranche entdeckt worden. Da hinkt Sarrazin vor allem den Agenturen, die z.B. für die Zigarettenindustrie kreativ tätig sind, um ein paar Jahre hinterher.

Nun, mit einem anderen seiner Lieblingsworte, "Gutmensch", war es nicht viel anders; siehe auf diesem Blog:

"Nicht zu unterschätzen im rhetorischen Kampf gegen "Gutmenschen & Co." ist
übrigens ein Einfluss von einer Seite, die zunächst unpolitisch erscheinen mag:
von Teilen der Industrie und Werbewirtschaft. Der negativ aufgeladene Begriff
"Gutmensch" ist geradezu ein "gefundenes Fessen" für die Image-Hebung von
ungesunden Nahrungsmitteln, Alkohol, Waffen, Porno, gewaltverherrlichenden
Videospielen, Zigaretten, etc. So findet man diesen Begriff auch häufig auf
gesponserten Internet-Foren, die z.B. "Rauchen und Genuss" propagieren. Eine
Google-Suche nach dem Wort "Gutmensch" ergibt 378.000 Treffer, davon enthalten
allein 198.000, also mehr als die Hälfte, auch das Wort "rauchen" "
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/05/feindbild-gutmensch-co-ein-klassiker_29.html

Bei "Tugendterror" enthält knapp ein Drittel der Google-Suchergebnisse für dieses Wort auch das Wort "rauchen", nämlich derzeit 6.090 von 20.800.
Googelt man allerdings "Tugendterror" ohne "Sarrazin" ("-Sarrazin" eingeben) kommt man nur auf 10.700 Einträge, und von diesen enthalten immerhin 4.380 das Wort "rauchen". Der Einfluss der Tabakindustrie/ Werbebranche auf die Popularisierung dieses Wortes ist deutlich. Thilo Sarrazin ist offenbar auf dem besten Weg, die Popularität des Wortes noch um ein Vielfaches zu steigern.
Da stehen wieder einmal Preise und Auszeichnungen an!
Zum Einfluss der Werbebranche auf die Popularisierung von Denkmustern - weit über die unmittelbare Produktwerbung hinaus - siehe auch
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/07/neue-dogmen-im-namen-des-anti.html

Wenn ich noch weiter zurück denke, erinnere ich mich, wie in den siebziger Jahren in manchen, fortschrittlich sein wollenden Milieus die "Tabuisierung" pädophiler Praktiken gerügt wurde; auch in dem Zusammenhang fielen Worte wie "Tugendterror".


_______


Ueberhaupt, Demokratie - an und für sich schon ein Terror!

(Siehe Zitat oben; "Gesinnungsdemokratie") 


_______


Norbert Bolz, Verfasser des "Konsumistischen Manifest" (siehe auch Post "Neue Dogmen im Namen des Antidogmatismus", Link oben), hat zum Thema "Tugendterror" schon mal vorgedacht.

Der Untergang der Meinungsfreiheit | FreieWelt.net
von Dr. Alexander Ulfig
13. Oktober 2010
http://www.freiewelt.net/der-untergang-der-meinungsfreiheit-2399/

Der Philosoph Norbert Bolz über den Tugendterror der Systemmedien und die
Aufgabe des Liberalismus

Der Philosoph Norbert Bolz hat im Focus Magazin einen bemerkenswerten Artikel über den Zustand der Meinungsfreiheit in Deutschland geschrieben. In „Die neuen Jakobiner“ reflektiert er auch über die Bestimmung und die Aufgabe des Liberalismus.
Der Tugendterror der Systemmedien stellt jeden liberal Denkenden in seiner
Existenz in Frage. Unmissverständlich stellt Bolz fest, dass die Meinungsfreiheit das Wertvollste für einen guten Europäer ist. Der Sinn der Meinungs- und Redefreiheit besteht darin, abweichende Meinungen in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen, ihnen einen besonderen Wert zuzusprechen.
Die meinungsbildenden Eliten der Bundesrepublik haben sich von der so
verstandenen Idee der Meinungsfreiheit weit entfernt. Abweichende Meinungen
werden gegenwärtig härter sanktioniert als abweichendes Verhalten. Diese
Sanktionen laufen meist über Ausschlussmechanismen: Menschen, die abweichende Meinungen äußern, werden verfemt, ausgegrenzt und aus dem öffentlichen Diskurs ausgeschlossen. Kaum jemand bringt den Mut zum Widerspruch auf. Der Druck ist so groß, dass gesetzliche Strafen überflüssig sind. [...]
Kein Wunder, wenn Andersdenkenden mediale Schauprozesse gemacht werden. Die Folge davon ist, dass die überwältigende Mehrheit der Menschen schweigt. Elisabeth Noelle-Naumann spricht in diesem Zusammenhang von der „Schweigespirale“, die sich die Systemmedien zunutze gemacht haben. Die mainstreammediale Meinung ist eine von Minderheiten konstruierte Meinung.
Sie wird aber als die Meinung der Mehrheit ausgegeben. Dabei geht es den
Systemjournalisten nicht darum, eine abweichende Meinung argumentativ als falsch zu erweisen, sondern die Abweichler als unmoralisch zu verurteilen. Bolz: “Man kritisiert abweichende Meinungen nicht mehr, sondern hasst sie einfach. Wer widerspricht, wird nicht widerlegt, sondern zum Schweigen gebracht.“ Die Menschen werden in Deutschland zum „willenlosen Opfer eines Tugendterrors“, der überall herrscht: an den Universitäten, in den Medien, im Recht und in der Politik.
Bolz betont abschließend, dass es eine Schicksalsfrage für jeden Liberalen ist,
in den Wächtern des Systemjournalismus, in den neuen Jakobinern, seine
natürlichen Feinde zu sehen. Von der heutigen FDP kann man da nicht viel
erwarten. Liberale wie Westerwelle haben vor der Macht des Tugendterrors
kapituliert. [...]


Tja, wie der arme Thilo Sarrazin aber auch zum Schweigen gebracht wurde ...
wie da die Massenmedien eine Schweigespirale inszenierten, wie sie ihn gnadenlos totschwiegen ...



Prost! 
Der Bundesverband der Deutschen Spirituosen-Industrie und -Importeure e.V. (BSI)
pflegt die philosophische und politische Landschaft

Professor Bolz macht sich gegen den Tugendterror stark -
hier für die Spirituosen-Industrie.

 “Abschließend analysierte Prof. Dr. Norbert Bolz, Professor für Medienwissenschaft, Technische Universität Berlin, Fakultät I – Geisteswissenschaften, Institut für Sprache und Kommunikation, Fachgebiet Medienwissenschaft, Berlin, das Thema „Verantwortung in den Medien“. Prof. Dr. Norbert Bolz sieht Chancen dafür, dass die durch Sensations- und Skandalorientierung verzerrte Wirklichkeitsdarstellung in den Massenmedien durch die Konkurrenz der internetbasierten sozialen Medien korrigiert werden kann.”

Aus der Pressemitteilung des BSI zum 12. Spirituosenforum
BSI AKTUELL - Bundesverband der Deutschen Spirituosen-Industrie und -Importeure e.V.
Nr. 11/2013, 14. November 2013

Prof. Dr. Julian Nida-Rümelin, Staatsminister a. D., Professor für Philosophie, war übrigens ebenfalls dabei. Passt gut zum Thema Medien; in den Koalitionsverhandlungen war er in der Arbeitsgruppe “Kultur und Medien”.
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2013/11/koalitionsverhandlungen.html


Siehe auch BSI und das "Bürgermeistercasting von Husum"; Stichwort Husum in Kommentaren zu dem Post
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/05/feindbild-gutmensch-co-ein-klassiker_29.html


"Die Sklaven sind glücklich, weil sie von der Freiheit entlastet sind. …Demokratie verträgt sich sehr gut mit autoritären Herrschaftsformen“  - Norbert Bolz, Philosoph, Lobbyist für den Bundesverband der Deutschen Spirituosen-Industrie und -Importeure e.V. (BSI) , 2011

Aus: Norbert Bolz, „Die Ankündigung der Freiheit - Plädoyer für einen neuen Liberalismus“.

SWR2 (Radio), Sendung: 28.02.2011 

zitiert auf  http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/07/neue-dogmen-im-namen-des-anti.html




_______


"Gutmensch" ist nicht genug - denn da fragen sich doch so manche, was fuer eine Gesellschaft das sein soll, in der das Interesse am Gemeinwohl zum Inbegriff des Negativen wird. Um ein Haar waere das Gutmensch-Wort zum "Unwort des Jahres" gekuert worden.
Also muss ein neuer Begriff her: Der Gutmensch wird zum Terroristen - zum Tugendterroristen.


Die vermeintlich bestehende oder drohende "Herrschaft der Minderwertigen" abzuwehren, ist das Kernanliegen der "Konservativen Revolution".
Siehe auch Stichwort "Herrschaft der Minderwertigen" auf
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2012/03/mehr-zum-thema-nostalgie.html
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2013/06/drei-generationen-sarrazin-zeitzeugen.html


24.02.2014

Thilo Sarrazin: "Es regiert die Gleichheitsideologie"
von Henning Krumrey
http://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/thilo-sarrazin-es-regiert-die-gleichheitsideologie-seite-all/9527174-all.html

... Von "Gleichheitswahn" ist auch die Rede.
Erinnert an "Bildungswahn"; siehe Stichwort auf diesem Blog.
An anderer Stelle mokierte sich Sarrazin ueber "Bildungsoptimismus";
http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/12/anbiederungen.html

Vordenker: Hartnacke; Freund und Foerderer von Hans F.K. Guenther, dem "Rasse-Guenther" der Nazi-Zeit

“Wir hassen das Schlagwort von der Gleichheit.
Der Kampf ist der Vater aller Dinge, Gleichheit ist der Tod.”
Rudolf vom Sebottendorf,
Gründer der Thule-Gesellschaft, 1918

http://guttmensch.blogspot.com/2011/06/eugenisches-denken-demokratie-als.html




Wappen der Thule-Gesellschaft
Abbildung gefunden auf
 http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/joeblow/
nazi-party-thule-society-occult-and-freemasonry

 

• „Der Tugendterror bei uns in Deutschland kommt in der Tat aus einem falsch verstandenen Gleichheitswahn. Dieser hat seine Wurzeln in der französischen Aufklärung bei Rousseau, bei den französischen Sozialisten bis hin zu Marx, und dieser Gleichheitswahn dominiert als quasi abgesunkenes Kulturgut leider weite Teile der deutschen Medien.“
  Aus
  Thilo Sarrazin über sein Buch "Der neue Tugendterror“Moderation: Katrin HeiseDeutschlandradioThema / Beitrag vom 24.02.2014
  http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/meinung-sarrazin-gleichheitswahn-dominiert-die-medien.954.de.html?dram:article_id=278289

Es duerfte nicht verwundern, wenn Thilo Sarrazin bei einer Neu-Auflage der Thule-Gesellschaft Anklang findet; siehe die folgende Webseite, gefunden mit Google (Suchwortkombination Sebottendorf Sarrazin)

  Willkommen bei der Thule Gesellschaft
  ww.w.thule-gesellschaft.org/.../730-holocaust-suehne‎
  Eine der wichtigsten Aufgaben der Thule Gesellschaft ist die Erhaltung ...
  Thilo Sarrazin provoziert wieder: "Europa braucht den Euro nicht", meint er
  und legt ...http://ww.w.thule-gesellschaft.org/index.php/94-archiv/730-holocaust-suehne

  

feindliche Zitate - Willkommen bei der Thule Gesellschaftww.w.thule-gesellschaft.org/.../610-feindliche-zitate‎ „Das Problem ist nicht Sarrazin selbst als Person sondern der gleich gesinnte ... Cem Özdemir, Bündnis90/Die Grünen, Quelle (Sarrazin hat bis zu 90% ...http://ww.w.thule-gesellschaft.org/index.php/startseite-der-tg/94-archiv/610-feindliche-zitate

(Nur „Happen“ im Google-Cache, da man registriert sei muss, um Zugriff auf die „Thule“-Webseite zu haben)

____


"Tugendterror"- Rezension von Klaus Bade

http://www.migazin.de/2014/02/24/thilo-sarrazin-der-neue-tugendterror-rezension-klaus-bade-welt-ungerecht/


_______

"Verharmloser und Schönfärber"' - das sind für Thilo Sarrazin die neuen "Tugendterroristen". Ansätze ihrer Denkweise glaubt er bereits im Frühchristentum und bei Vertretern der Französischen Revolution auszumachen oder sogar in den dereinst neu gegründeten Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika. Heute spürt er die Denkweise hauptsächlich bei Zeitgenossen auf, die mit der Sprache Unterschiede eliminieren wollen. Also bei jenen, die nicht mehr "Negerkuss" sagen und auch nicht "Zigeuner", die nicht mehr von" Hilfsschülern" reden und Wörter vermeiden, von denen sich andere Menschen stigmatisiert fühlen könnten. Thilo Sarrazin nennt sie die Apologeten der political correctness und hält sie für besessen vom Gleichheitswahn.

Aus
Das Buch eines gekränkten Mannes
Rezension "Der neue Tugendterror"
Von Dorothea Jung
Andruck - Das Magazin für Politische Literatur / Beitrag vom 24.02.2014
http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/rezension-der-neue-tugendterror-das-buch-eines-gekraenkten.1310.de.html?dram:article_id=278416

_______

Gefunden mit Google-Suche „Gleichheitswahn“ und „Sebottendorf“ (s.o.):
Webseite von “Dee Ex”, auf der auch ein Michael Sebottendorf schreibt
"Motto: Deutsch sein ist kein Verbrechen - unsere Weltanschauung hat gesiegt@

“Der Gegenpol zu Gleichheit, Gleichschaltung, Enteignung und Meinungsterror kann nur die Freiheit sein: Gedankenfreiheit und wirtschaftliche Freiheit, individuelle und nationale Freiheit.” Wer etwas anderes behauptet oder sogar gewaltsam (mit der Nazikeule) propagiert, ist und bleibt ein Feind unseres Landes, der Demokratie und eines jeden freien Menschen.

https://nohoearmy.wordpress.com/tag/national/


________

Eine der ersten, wenn nicht überhaupt die erste, die die Phrase „Gutmenschen sind Terroristen“ (Liberals are terrorists) gebrauchte, ist die Kolumnistin Ann Coulter; der folgenden Quellenangabe zufolge am 11. Januar 2001 in ihrer „Townhall“ Kolumne.

What's Wrong with the Christian Right | By Jan G. Linn

What's Wrong with the Christian Right - Page 42 - Google Books Result
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1581124244
Jan G. Linn - 2004 - ‎Political Science

Writer Brenden Nyhan of Spinsanity.com, an online journal that promotes integrity and accuracy in public discourse, assesses Coulter's Townhall columns in this way:
Coulter’s world is cartoonish. Liberals are "terrorists" (1 / 11/01) and a "cult" (2/22/01) who "can never just make a principled argument" (3/22/01). Their arguments are portrayed as hysterical, (2/9/01, 4/5/01, 6/15/01), screaming (1/18/01, 6/21/01) or starting political World War III (2/9/01, 3/8/01).

 

Zur Einordnung von Ann Coulter: Sie hatte in ihrer Kolumne auch schon einmal die versehentliche Bombardierung der französischen Botschaft in Tripoli durch US Airforce 1986 mit einem „puckischen Sinn für Humor“ der Piloten erklärt.

Ann Coulter: Attack France! | WorldNetDaily | 12/19/2001
… Quaking in the face of this show of manly force, France denied America the use of its airspace. As a consequence, American pilots were required to begin their missions from airbases in Britain. When the pilots finally made it to Tripoli, tired from the long flights and showing a puckish sense of humor, they bombed the French embassy by mistake. POW! So sorry, our mistake. …http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/593954/posts?page=94

Neujahr mit dem Hundertjährigen

Ein gutes Neues Jahr wünsche ich allen Lesern und Besuchern dieses Blogs.

In Schweden, wo ich den Jahreswechsel erlebt habe, hatten viele Kinos am Silvester-Nachmittag einen neuen, mit Spannung erwarteten Film im Programm:

• Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann
  
  Deutscher Titel (der Film soll in Deutschland ab Maerz in den Kinos sein):
  DER HUNDERTJÄHRIGE, DER AUS DEM FENSTER STIEG UND VERSCHWAND
  Trailer & Infos auf Deutsch German siehe z.B. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCT7FtfV0V4
  
  Inhaltsangabe z.B. auf http://www.dieterwunderlich.de/Jonasson-hundertjaehrige-fenster-stieg.htm

Während die Gratulanten, eine Torte mit 100 Kerzen balancierend und ein traditionelles schwedisches Geburtstagslied auf den Lippen ("100 Jahre alt sollst du werden") sich dem Zimmer im Pflegeheim nähern, entkommt das Geburtstagskind durchs Fenster der unerwünschten Fuersorge, und die Abenteuer nehmen ihren Lauf. Der Film ist offenbar - u.a. - von "Forrest Gump" inspiriert.

Die Geschichte von den Abenteuern des Allan Karlsson ist durchsetzt mit Rückblenden aus den 100 Jahren seines bisherigen Lebens.

Ganz unbedarft ist Allan, der sich, geprägt von Familientraumen im Ersten Weltkrieg, das Hantieren mit Sprengstoffen zum Hobby gemacht hat, irgendwie immer in die vorderste Front der Weltgeschichte gestolpert.

Auch die Geschichte der Eugenik/ Rassenhygiene in Schweden ist nicht ausgelassen.

Nach einem tödlichen Sprengstoff-Unfall, den der Teenager Allan verursacht hat, wird er einem "Dr. Lundborg" zur Begutachtung vorgefuehrt. Der misst seinen Schädel und sonstige Koerperteile aus und vergleicht seine Gesichtszüge mit Bildern aus seiner Sammlung. Schlussfolgerung: Allans Physiognomie gleicht am meisten der eines "Neger-Jazzmusiker" aus den USA, und er muss deshalb unters Messer: Eugenische Indikation zur Unfruchtbarmachung.

Den Dr. Lundborg, der entschied, wer rassisch minderwertig und daher der Zwangssterilisation zu unterziehen sei, gab es wirklich.

Wikipedia über Herman Lundborg: "Lundborg vertrat die Ansicht, dass bestimmte Volksgruppen rasseuntauglich seien, so z.B. Lappen, Schwarze und Juden. 1921 wurde Lundborg zum Professor und Leiter des neugegründeten Staatlichen Instituts für Rassenbiologie in Uppsala ernannt, dessen Ziel in der Erforschung der Kennzeichen wertvoller Rassen bestand." - über das Staatliche Institut für Rassenbiologie in Uppsala, Schweden (Statens institut för rasbiologi, Rasbiologiska institutet, SIFR): "Der Vorschlag für das Gesetz zur Gründung dieses weltweit ersten wissenschaftlichen rassebiologischen Institutes war von den Sozialdemokraten in den schwedischen Reichstag eingebracht worden."

(Siehe auch Stichwort "Lundborg" auf diesem Blog; z.B.  http://guttmensch.blogspot.se/2011/07/die-fehlende-halfte-der-satire.html ; http://guttmensch.blogspot.se/2011/07/gegen-das-ideal-der-gleichartigkeit.html)



"Rassenbiologe" Professor Dr. Herman Lundborg
Bild gefunden auf
http://www.lakartidningen.se/Functions/
OldArticle.aspx?articleId=9567
Lundborg wird in einer Szene im "Hundertjährigen"
treffend karikiert

Auszug aus dem Buch von Jonas Jonasson, das dem Film zugrunde liegt
(in deutscher Uebersetzung) auf
http://xn----7sbb3aiknde1bb0dyd.xn--p1ai/index.php?id=126836&pages=9

“ […] Doch Bernhard Lundborg gehörte nicht zu den Ãrzten, die sich mit ihren Patienten auf philosophische Diskussionen einließen. Stattdessen wiederholte er die Frage nach dem Negerblut. Allan antwortete, das könne man nicht wissen, aber seine Eltern seien ebenso weißhäutig gewesen wie er, und ob diese Antwort für den Herrn Professor nicht ausreichend sei? Er fügte hinzu, dass er unheimlich gern mal einen richtigen Neger sehen würde, ob der Herr Professor wohl zufällig gerade einen auf Lager habe?
Professor Lundborg und seine Assistenten beantworteten Allans Gegenfragen nicht, sondern machten sich Notizen und brummten etwas in sich hinein, und dann ließen sie ihn wieder in Frieden […]
Allan fühlte sich wohl in seiner Zwangsbetreuung. Nur einmal wurde die Stimmung getrübt, als Allan nämlich den Professor neugierig fragte, was denn eigentlich so schlimm daran sei, wenn einer Neger oder Jude war. Da antwortete der Professor ausnahmsweise nicht mit Schweigen, sondern brüllte, dass Herr Karlsson sich gefälligst um seinen eigenen Kram kümmern und sich nicht in die Angelegenheiten anderer Leute mischen solle. […]
Die Jahre gingen ins Land, und die Befragungen wurden immer seltener. Dann gab der Reichstag eine Untersuchung zur Sterilisierung »biologisch minderwertiger Personen« in Auftrag, und als der Bericht veröffentlicht wurde, verschaffte er Professor Lundborgs Tätigkeit einen solchen Aufschwung, dass Allans Bett von anderen benötigt wurde. Im Frühsommer 1929 wurde Allan also für rehabilitiert erklärt und auf die Straße gesetzt. […]”  

Anders als die deutschen haben die schwedischen Sozialdemokraten sich schon vor Jahren der Auseinandersetzung mit den dunkleren Seiten ihrer Parteigeschichte gestellt. Dies war wohl eine wichtige Voraussetzung dafür, dass es weniger Verdraengung gibt und auch eine satirische Behandlung - wie in diesem Film - nun möglich ist.

 

_______

Wie die Eugenik verbreitet wurde: Der Fall Schweden
Ein Fleck auf der Reputation des Wohlfahrtsstaates

“For Lundborg, as for foreign colleagues from Galton to Günther, eugenics was something akin to a world view, a science deeply coloured by political ambition and ideology.”
- Aus dem Artikel von Maria Björkman und Sven Widmalm; siehe Auszüge unten

“Für Lundborg, wie für Kollegen aus anderen Ländern von Galton bis Günther, war Eugenik so etwas wie eine Weltanschauung; eine Wissenschaft, die zutiefst gefärbt war von politischer Ambition und Ideologie.”
- Eigene Übersetzung des Zitats aus dem Artikel von Björkman und Widmalm 

Wiedergabe der folgenden Auszüge mit ausdrücklicher Zustimmung der Autoren

Aus

Selling eugenics: the case of Sweden
Maria Björkman and Sven Widmalm*

+ Author Affiliations
Department of Thematic Studies, Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, 581 83 Linköping, Sweden
*Author for correspondence (sven.widmalm@liu.se).

http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/08/12/rsnr.2010.0009.full

 

Abstract

This paper traces the early (1910s to 1920s) development of Swedish eugenics through a study of the social network that promoted it. The eugenics network consisted mainly of academics from a variety of disciplines, but with medicine and biology dominating; connections with German scientists who would later shape Nazi biopolitics were strong. The paper shows how the network used political lobbying (for example, using contacts with academically accomplished MPs) and various media strategies to gain scientific and political support for their cause, where a major goal was the creation of a eugenics institute (which opened in 1922). It also outlines the eugenic vision of the institute's first director, Herman Lundborg. In effect the network, and in particular Lundborg, promoted the view that politics should be guided by eugenics and by a genetically superior elite. The selling of eugenics in Sweden is an example of the co-production of science and social order.

Introduction

The fact that Sweden was the first country where a government-funded eugenics (or ‘race biological’) institute was created has been considered a stain on the reputation of the emerging welfare state, made worse by the fact that a law that legitimized the forced sterilization of thousands was enacted in the 1930s. […]

The paper discusses not only how Swedish eugenics was launched and in time institutionalized with the help of consciously devised media strategies and lobbying practices but also aspects of the biopolitical message contained in these campaigns. The newspaper articles, pamphlets, books and exhibitions in effect eulogized the very network that produced them. […] Also as in Germany, the politicized agenda of the eugenics movement was not imposed by politicians but rather evolved within, and was marketed by, the ‘biomedical’ community.⁶

The Swedish eugenics network may have been relatively small but it was nevertheless historically significant because of its intimate ties with that part of the German eugenics movement that would shape Nazi biopolitics. Leading members of the Swedish network had close contacts with, among others, Erwin Baur, Fritz Lenz, Ernst Rüdin and Hans Günther. Baur was a friend of several Swedish geneticists⁷ and from time to time visited the country, sometimes lecturing on eugenics; Lenz likewise made lecture tours in Sweden; Rüdin had close connections with Swedish eugenicists, some of whom were visiting researchers at his Munich institute; Günther lived in Sweden for some years in the 1920s and lectured at the Swedish institute.⁸ Not all early supporters of eugenics in Sweden subscribed to the radical ideas that we associate with these scientists, but the fact that some of its most influential promoters did—not least the director of the race-biological institute—would in effect make Swedish eugenics in the 1920s an important contributor to the right-wing flank of ‘mainline’ or ‘orthodox’ eugenics that would eventually become a pillar of Third Reich biopolitics.⁹ The Swedish race-biological institute was in fact the model for the corresponding Kaiser Wilhelm Institute founded in 1927 with Fritz Lenz as Director; after 1933 the Swedes Herman Nilsson-Ehle, Herman Lundborg and Torsten Sjögren would support Nazi interests in international organizations such as the International Federation of Eugenic Organisations.¹⁰

A main ambition of the network and its central character, the physician Herman Lundborg (1868–1943), was to institutionalize eugenics. With the creation of the Government Institute for Race Biology (Statens institut för rasbiologi) in Uppsala in 1922, the network, of which Lundborg became director and other leading figures in the network board members, was also in a sense institutionalized. These developments may be described using what Sheila Jasanoff has called the ‘idiom’ of co-production.¹¹ This is a blanket expression for ideas underlying much work in the history and sociology of science over the past decades, in which the interconnectedness of scientific thought and practices on the one hand and of social order on the other is highlighted.  […] Furthermore the interconnection of eugenics and policy was underpinned by ideology production within the eugenic discourse. […]

The network

The Swedish eugenics network has been identified mainly through private correspondence between members and also through the study of archival sources from the Mendelian Society in Lund and the Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene in Stockholm (the latter being the first non-German national society to join the Internationale Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene).

In Sweden, Mendelian genetics was first practised in plant breeding, in which Herman Nilsson-Ehle achieved international renown for theoretical results publicized in his doctoral dissertation in 1909. Nilsson-Ehle's work also showed great practical promise, namely for the production of a hardy variety of winter wheat. […] Nilsson-Ehle, who became a great advocate of eugenics and whose views were in line with the ‘agri-eugenics’ of his good friend Erwin Baur, claimed that results similar to those achieved in plant breeding could also be expected if Mendelism were to be applied to human beings.¹⁴

The Mendelian Society was founded in 1910 on the initiative of Robert Larsson, amanuensis at the Botanical Institution. The core members of the society were connected to this department. Besides Larsson, the plant breeders Nils Heribert-Nilsson and Birger Kajanus belonged to this group, of which Nilsson-Ehle—first chair of the society—was the intellectual leader. At the society's meetings various genetic topics were dealt with, and among these eugenics was prominent.¹⁵

In 1909 the Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene was formed—the third of its kind in the world. It also endorsed Mendelism as a ‘solid ground’ on which to build eugenic reform.¹⁶ The society's goal was to influence public policy as well as public opinion by spreading knowledge about eugenic methods and results, and to support research. It was said that one wished to encourage ‘general support’ for eugenic reform, independently of political affiliation.^{17 […]}

Like contemporary eugenicists in the USA, the UK and Germany, the Swedes promoted both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ measures. The positive measures were directed at increasing procreation among ‘fit’ elements of the population. Negative measures sought to ‘stem the flow of notoriously worthless individuals’.¹⁹ Sterilization was put forth as a superior tool to achieve the latter goal. It was, however, controversial and it was said that legal changes necessary to implement sterilization on eugenic indicators would have to be grounded in ‘popular opinion’, and that a pressing task for the society was therefore to influence general attitudes. […]

Several of the society's board members were left-leaning liberals with a strong commitment to social reform. Among these were the society's secretary, Johan Vilhelm Hultkrantz, a physician and a professor at Uppsala University with a long-standing interest in physical anthropology who became a leading figure in the eugenics network. However, the central characters in the network, Herman Lundborg and Herman Nilsson-Ehle, were not liberals but radical conservatives. Hence, although the ideological interpretation of eugenics may have varied among its members, by choosing to promote Lundborg as director of the institute the network in effect promoted a right-wing interpretation of the emerging discipline. […]

The Mendelian Society also functioned as a gateway to continental eugenics, for example by inviting Baur and Lenz to lecture on racial hygiene and population policies.²²

Lundborg also became a good friend of the above-mentioned Robert Larsson, a science writer and the network's foremost media strategist. He was an influential promoter of genetics in southern Sweden, became the first editor of Hereditas and published a Swedish translation of the famous eugenics textbook by Baur, Fischer and Lenz. The relationship soon became personal, in a way typical of social networks. […]

Other important persons in the network were the physicians and professors of medicine Frithiof Lennmalm and the above-mentioned Hultkrantz. The former was Rector at the Karolinska Institute and a member of the Nobel Committee for Medicine and had been Lundborg's teacher. Another scientist central to the network from the end of the 1910s was the Uppsala zoologist Nils von Hofsten. He was pioneering genetics teaching at Uppsala University, publishing his lectures in 1919 as the country's first genetics textbook. […]

The network's cause was helped by the war. […] In 1918 von Hofsten concluded that the eugenic effects [of war] were thoroughly negative: ‘Modern warfare cuts down the best and spares the worst elements’.²⁵ Other members of the network argued that the war proved the necessity for stronger eugenic policies. Sweden, it was claimed, had been spared the worst effects of the war and could become a forerunner in eugenic matters, not least because leading politicians now seemed to realize that the question was urgent. In the final analysis this was a matter of maintaining the hegemony of western European civilization that—if eugenic measures were not implemented—risked being ‘overrun by other peoples’.²⁶ Alarmist arguments about racial decline and economic arguments about the enormous costs caused by the ‘unfit’ became the two most important rhetorical elements of eugenic campaigning during the war and immediately afterwards. As in Germany the eugenics movement in Sweden stressed ‘technocratic logic and cost–benefit analysis’.²⁷

Eugenic pamphlets

One campaign was the publication of a series of pamphlets in 1919–23 by the Society for Racial Hygiene. Eight titles edited by Lundborg were produced, discussing various aspects of eugenics and its importance for social and economic issues. The pamphlets were cheap, and many copies were given away free of charge; a notice printed on their back stated: ‘School teachers, clergy, doctors, and others are urged to distribute these publications.’ […]

Although the pamphlets dealt with a variety of subjects, they focused on two main problems and offered two main solutions. The problems were those of degeneration and of the economic burdens of caring for the unfit. Sterilization was favoured, as a ‘vaccine’ that would help bring down social and medical costs associated with low genetic quality in a more humane way than internment.³¹ Several pamphlets argued for a parliamentary investigation concerning the sterilization question that one hoped would lead to legal changes.³² As for tracking the effects of degeneration, research based on Mendelian genetics, performed in specialized institutes, was offered as the only viable solution.³³ The Swedes argued that (unlike in Great Britain and America) the government should finance such an effort and that this would soon pay off because costs associated with caring for the unfit would dwindle.³⁴

The reception of the pamphlet series was very positive, not least because members of the network tended to review each other's publications favourably. This was true not only of the pamphlet series; such reviewing practices were also part of the network's media strategy in general.³⁵ The popularizer Larsson was important in these dealings. […] A typical comment from Larsson regarding media matters shows how he operated: Of course I shall gladly review both of your works that are being printed. As soon as I have copies of them I will write to the editorial office of SvD [the conservative daily Svenska Dagbladet]. You can most certainly count on Heribert-Nilsson. You will get good reviews [artiklar] by M. Phil. Erhard Bäckström in Social-Dem. [the Social Democratic daily Social-Demokraten]. Lännart Ribbing in Stockholms Dagblad [conservative] [and] Olof Swedeberg in Dagens Nyheter [liberal] may also be counted on.³⁷ Of those mentioned, at least Heribert-Nilsson and Ribbing belonged to the eugenics network. The reviews were used for promoting the idea of an institute and of Lundborg as the perfect director of such an outfit.³⁸ The production of promotional writing and the staging of a favourable reception of such writing were both central to the network's media strategy. This is also seen in the use of another medium of propaganda, namely the eugenic exhibition that was organized in 1919.

The 1919 exhibition

[…] The exhibition ‘Swedish racial types’ (Svenska folktyper) in 1919, organized by Lundborg, seemed to show conclusively that eugenics had extensive popular support. The exhibition visited five Swedish towns, starting in Stockholm in March and ending in Gothenburg in September, displaying genetic and anthropological materials using photography, sculpture and portrait painting.³⁹ According to Lundborg it was visited by 40 000 people.⁴⁰

Private individuals, publishing companies and newspapers donated money to help finance the exhibition. They represented a political spectrum from the liberal left to the conservative right and included the publishing company Albert Bonnier AB and its liberal broadsheet Dagens Nyheter, owned by the Jewish Bonnier family. The exhibition subscribed to the common notion that the Jewish ‘race’ was almost on a par with the Nordic ‘race’, qualitatively speaking. In private, Lundborg expressed anti-Semitic views, including the typical complaint about persecution by the ‘Jewish press’.⁴¹ As anti-Semitism was a somewhat controversial stand in Sweden at this time, the downplaying of this aspect of his eugenic views should be seen as part of the media strategy of, if not the network, at least Lundborg himself.⁴²

The exhibition presented anthropological material on ‘the Nordic type’ in Sweden including the distribution of long skulls and eye colour, seen as crucial racial characteristics. One part of the exhibition focused on individual members of the social elites, such as scientists, politicians and military men. Some academics put on display there were members of the eugenics network. Examples of low-quality race traits were also exhibited, for example criminals, gypsies and vagabonds, illustrating that ‘[m]oral degeneration is often accompanied by physical degeneration.’⁴³ […]

The exhibition was a public display of eugenic ideas and ideals staged by Lundborg with the help of some network colleagues as well as wealthy supporters from the Swedish middle class. Media coverage paralleled that of the eugenic pamphlets: it was overwhelmingly positive, not least because of friendly reviews from members of the network that endorsed the eugenic cause in a broad sense.⁴⁵ Nilsson-Ehle wrote, in the leading conservative broadsheet Svenska Dagbladet, that the policies of a nation ought to be founded on eugenics and that only physicians could handle these matters in an expert and humane way. He finished this article—allegedly about the exhibition but in reality about the necessity of eugenic research and policies—by praising Lundborg and arguing that an institute should immediately be created with him as a leader.⁴⁶

Lobbying the rich and mighty

The process of creating a eugenic research institute went through several phases before succeeding. In 1916 a failed attempt was made to obtain political support for the creation of an institute; in 1918 the network tried but failed to establish an association for Swedish culture with a eugenic agenda. Thereafter the network put great effort into the idea to create a eugenic Nobel institute. Finally a second attempt to create a government-sponsored institute eventually succeeded.

Throughout this campaign the professional and cultural affinity between the network—dominated by academics and in particular biologists and physicians—and members of politically influential elites was of the greatest importance. When Larsson drafted a parliamentary bill proposing an institute in 1916, the initiative came from an MP who was the manager of an insurance company.⁴⁷ The idea of creating a cultural association was promoted by Hultkrantz and others, who lobbied MPs, church leaders and academics at the universities. At least two right-wing MPs, K. G. Westman and Nils Wohlin—both professors at Uppsala University—promised to support the project. The university chancellor, a right-wing politician, was also in favour, as were the rector of Uppsala University and the archbishop (also a professor). After these initial successes Hultkrantz commented, ‘Negotiations with the “mighty” have thus been successful; let's hope things will go well also with the “rich”!’⁴⁸ […]

To gain government support, Lundborg and Larsson turned again to Parliament, using political contacts to make an MP write a bill proposing an institute. This time the network met with success, and in 1920 the bill was finally put forward by the psychiatrist and Social Democratic MP Alfred Petrén, a member of the Society for Racial Hygiene. […]

As we have seen, Larsson ghosted the aborted bill in 1916 and when the new bill was to be written he again offered his services, recommending Lundborg to produce testimonies regarding the necessity of founding a eugenics institute by quoting experts that had written about the matter.⁵⁴ Hence the bill contained extensive passages from the writings of several professors belonging to the network, including all the main characters mentioned above, recommending that an institute be created with Lundborg as director.⁵⁵ The publishing of such testimonials was a central component in the network's media strategy, because they gave a powerful impression of authoritative scientific support. In effect the network was now summoned collectively to appear on the political stage, presenting its case for eugenic reform under Lundborg's leadership. The same was true of the ‘general public’, whose support had been stage-managed through the 1919 exhibition and other media exhortations by the network. The bill referred to the public's sense of ‘self preservation’ that had led to a mounting ‘public opinion’ in favour of political action to counter the threat of ‘degeneration’ by supporting eugenic research.⁵⁶

Political support was as strong as that from science. When the bill was put forward, in January 1920, it was signed by some of the country's most powerful politicians, including the leaders of the Social Democrats and the Conservative coalition, Hjalmar Branting and Arvid Lindman. Several politicians who were also scientifically well respected signed the bill. Wohlin, a professor of statistics, and Petrén have been mentioned above. The bill passed both chambers without much opposition. The Government Institute for Race Biology opened on 1 January 1922, with Lundborg as its director. Among the board members were those in the network who had been most involved in campaigning for the institute: Lennmalm, Nilsson-Ehle, Hultkrantz and Hofsten.⁵⁷

Lundborg's eugenic vision

[…] It cannot be said that the members of the eugenics network shared all aspects of Lundborg's thinking; on the contrary, there is evidence that they did not. […] But by making Lundborg a professor and institute director the network had in effect made him the legitimate spokesman for eugenics in Sweden. Hence Lundborg's eugenic vision became, for more than a decade, the officially sanctioned eugenic vision in Sweden. Furthermore, there is evidence that it was shared by some influential members of the network that continued to evolve around the eugenics institute, for example the physicians and Nazi sympathizers Gösta Häggqvist (a member of the institute's board) and Torsten Sjögren (whom Lundborg wanted as successor).

After the institute had been founded, Lundborg continued to promote the scientific and professional standing of eugenics on both a national and a Nordic level. An early example of this was the campaign to wedge eugenics into the programme of the traditional Scandinavian science meetings. At the 1916 meeting in Copenhagen, genetics (arvelighetsforskning) was introduced on the agenda and drew large crowds.⁵⁸ At the next meeting in Gothenburg in 1923 the genetics section included eugenics (‘race biology’), with Lundborg as the Swedish chair. This arrangement, which gave eugenics a more prominent role than earlier, depended on the support of Nilsson-Ehle, whose enormous scientific prestige again proved vital for the eugenic cause.⁵⁹

In the mid 1920s Lundborg wished to create some kind of royal academy for eugenics, an idea that was criticized within the network, not least because Lundborg thought that membership should be limited to those of Nordic descent and Christian faith.⁶⁰ In 1925 Lundborg managed to organize a Nordic conference that resulted in the creation of a Nordic Association for Anthropology. The meeting at Uppsala became a manifestation of Nordic eugenic supremacist propaganda and of the political aspirations of the emerging profession.⁶¹ However, the association was a failure and did not reconvene.⁶²

Lundborg's efforts to organize Swedish and Nordic eugenics therefore had mixed results. Unlike Nilsson-Ehle, who was a charismatic leader with several devoted disciples, he never managed to create a strong research school or stable organizations (the institute itself turned out to be rather ineffective). Lundborg was, however, an untiring propagandist who continued to publicize the eugenic vision by extravagant means throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. For Lundborg, as for foreign colleagues from Galton to Günther, eugenics was something akin to a world view, a science deeply coloured by political ambition and ideology.

In Lundborg's case the world view was radically right-wing, and he emphasized the genetic superiority of the ‘Nordic’ race and of social elites within that race (believing proletarians, for example, to be degenerate).⁶³ As we have seen he was careful not to appear anti-Semitic, but in private he did flaunt anti-Semitic opinions and was, as early as 1924, clandestinely supporting a National Socialist group in Sweden, explaining to its leader that the only reason he had kept pretty ‘neutral’ so far was that he had consciously avoided the Jewish question for ‘tactical reasons’.⁶⁴ In the 1930s both Lundborg and Nilsson-Ehle supported the Hitler regime. With his strong belief in the racial superiority of the Nordic peasant stock, and his antipathy to industrialism, Lundborg may be placed in the blood-and-soil tradition promoted by Walther Darré and Erwin Baur.⁶⁵

The idea of the racial superiority of social elites, including scientists, and of the peasant stock was promoted in what may be called ‘eugenic coffee-table books’. These books, adhering to an established anthropological tradition, were directed at a middle-class audience and were also given away during campaigns to summon support and funding for the cause. Several of them were published in English and German so as to reach an international audience, including potential donors (Lundborg hoped to attract philanthropists such as Henry Ford).⁶⁶

The eugenic coffee-table books were patterned on similar works, with plates displaying national culture or nature. His own publications, Lundborg claimed, only took this genre to the next logical level by displaying the population itself with focus on its racial characteristics.⁶⁷ In these large books were images of people representing various racial mixtures and accompanying texts in which eugenics was explained and promoted. In Swedish racial types (Svenska folktyper) from 1919 (using imagery from the exhibition) Lundborg explained that eugenics had shown that there was a hierarchy among races, that the Nordic race was of better quality than the others, and that the Nordic element was more prominent in Sweden than in other countries.⁶⁸ In this, Lundborg drew not only on popular eugenic conceptions from Britain, the USA and Germany but also on the chauvinism that was an integral part of national romantic Swedish culture. The emphasis on the special racial strength of the peasantry was nourished by the folkloristic elements of contemporary nationalistic clichés (see below). Furthermore, Lundborg's claim that the Swedish peasants constituted the racial backbone of the nation resonated with political sensibilities in the newly democratic state.⁶⁹

But Lundborg's views were mostly far from democratic. Time and again he returned to his theory of the biological evolution, in Sweden, of ‘a natural aristocracy … , a middle class, and a lower class’.⁷⁰ The images of the rich and the mighty, and also of scientists and artists, that were displayed in the exhibition in 1919 (later also at the so-called Stockholm exhibition in 1930) and in the eugenic coffee-table books catered to political and economic benefactors and to academic colleagues by portraying them as members of a genetic and social and/or intellectual elite: ‘a natural stratification occurs everywhere in the world. Those individuals who have profited from a more favourable combination of genes tend to rise, whereas those who have less favourable genes sink deeper.’⁷¹ Lundborg saw this group, to which he himself belonged, as constituting a political leadership, proclaiming that ‘it behoves us to become advisers and helpers to races and peoples’.⁷²

This was what Lundborg wrote, but he also used imagery to promote his ideas, constructing a visual and textual discourse about the Swedish nation and its biological stratification. Photographic images were in a sense the bread and butter of Lundborg's research programme—he produced large number of them, using them as a complement to the biometric data also collected.⁷³ In the eugenic coffee-table books such photographs were used to illustrate various racial groups, or (presumed) hereditary afflictions such as criminality or alcoholism. But in addition Lundborg used images in a more subtle way. The images are a running visual commentary on the texts, broadening the message beyond what was actually said in words.

Figures 1 and 2 show images illustrating differences between racial groups, with some social categorizations mixed in as well. In figure 1 we see Nordic racial types and in figure 2 mixed racial types. These are represented by, on the one hand, a male and a ‘lady’ student, a ‘scientist’, and a ‘manufacturer’; and, on the other, a ‘manly’ woman ‘of low standing’ and two men of mixed race—one a ‘workman’ and the other a ‘criminal’. The difference in race corresponds to a difference in class, detectable not only in the verbal descriptions but in the subjects' general appearance, in which the Nordic types are presented in typical middle-class portraits and the mixed types in ‘mug shots’ characteristic of the tradition of eugenic photography. This correlation between race and class was in line with Lundborg's eugenic model that included the dogma that mixture between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ races produces degenerate offspring. Hence the images show what the verbal descriptions and the genetic theory say.⁷⁴

Figure 1.

These Nordic racial types are distinctly middle class. The ‘scientist’ is Professor Gustav Cassel, a well-known economist. (From Herman Lundborg and J. Runnström, The Swedish nation in word and picture (1921), plate IV.)

Figure 2.

The mixed-race types presented in Lundborg's work belonged to lower social strata and were sometimes, as in this case, ambivalent as to gender. (From Herman Lundborg and J. Runnström, The Swedish nation in word and picture (1921), plate X.)

Figures 3 and 4 exemplify the glorification of peasants in the national romantic style common in early twentieth-century Swedish art. We see a fisher girl from the south and an old man and two young women from Dalecarlia, a part of Sweden with emblematic status in the national romantic tradition. This national romantic view was expressed visually not least in the paintings by Anders Zorn, who was perhaps the best-known artist in Sweden in the early twentieth century (and who happened also to be the most generous individual economic supporter of the 1919 exhibition). Art historians of the time liked to portray Zorn as the embodiment of the particular Swedish qualities that found expression in his many folkloristic paintings.⁷⁵ In a more general sense art was identified with a ‘national spirit’ in which Swedish art critics in the 1920s tended to identify rural subjects with the ‘true’ character of the nation and urban subjects with twisted artificiality.⁷⁶ This was also the view of the blood-and-soil eugenicist Lundborg, and his images of racial types made use of the visual rhetoric preferred by conservative art critics.

Figure 3.

Farmers or peasants are sometimes presented folkloristically by Lundborg. Such images alluded to positive values associated with Swedish national romanticism. (From Herman Lundborg, Svenska folktyper (1919), p. 95.)

Figure 4.

This ‘fisher girl’ illustrates the iconographical connection between eugenic and national romantic imagery. (From Herman Lundborg, Svenska folktyper (1919), p. 83.)

These images show how the visual discourse managed to convey more information and broader connotations that the verbal descriptions. The pure Nordic types appear not only as thriving and strong individuals, from a salt-of-the-earth type of rural stock, as one would expect given the eugenic presuppositions. They also convey images of cultural heritage and national or regional tradition, in effect saying that the superior qualities of the Nordic race are reflected in its history and its culture.

Figure 5 shows examples of solid peasant and fisherman stock from the south of Sweden, the province of Scania (Skåne), conveying an image of brawny strength more than culture. Here, however, an interesting thing has happened: among the fishermen and the peasants, Nilsson-Ehle—indeed of peasant stock—appears, representing not himself or his science but the finest elements of his race. This very same photograph was used also in a publication edited by Lundborg, illustrating Nilsson-Ehle as a scientist.⁷⁷ The same man, even the same image, thus served the double purpose of illustrating the Nordic race and of lending scientific legitimacy to the eugenic cause. The subtext of this visual discourse is that eugenics was legitimate because it was supported by scientists with the finest racial qualities. The logic was as circular as the rhetoric was powerful. Portraits of other scientists were used in a similar fashion.⁷⁸

Figure 5.

The geneticist Herman Nilsson-Ehle appears among anonymous fishermen and a farmer from southern Sweden as a representative of the Nordic race. (From Herman Lundborg, Svenska folktyper (1919), p. 84.)

[…] Lundborg and other mainline eugenicists tended, in the tradition from Galton, to identify scientific prominence with biological supremacy, making genius a bodily trait that would legitimize not only the very science that explored human biology but also its ambition to guide social developments.⁸⁰

The most elaborate example of eugenic portraiture in Lundborg's oeuvre was a book—the first in a planned series of which only one volume materialized—that he and a portrait artist produced towards the end of his career. Swedes today was a luxury edition produced in 450 numbered copies in a large folio format. It portrayed 45 men who represented various national elites, with short biographical notes containing biometric data, indicating racial characteristics.
Again, the pedagogic purpose of the collection was to convince the reader of the national importance of eugenics. The people portrayed were of the kind that Lundborg constantly lobbied for resources, for instance the banker and Conservative politician Knut Wallenberg, who together with his wife was also the country's most important private financer of scientific research, including Lundborg's institute. There are several scientists in the book, among them Nilsson-Ehle, who now appeared simultaneously representing his race and his science, with the following description accompanying his portrait (figure 6): ‘Blue eyes. Soft, straight, light blond hair. Body height 1695, length of head 197, breadth of head 158, breadth of zygoma 145 mm.’⁸¹ The same measures were given for each of the subjects portrayed. Their accomplishments in science, art, politics, and so on, were thereby given a eugenic gloss that affected the visual message conveyed by their countenances. The imagery was depersonalized, not so much showing individual genius as genetic superiority, naturalizing the power of social and intellectual elites—to which many members of the eugenics network themselves belonged—in a manner similar to how national culture was naturalized in more folkloristic eugenic image production. This is as fine an example as any of the co-production of science and social order.

Figure 6.
In this portrait Nilsson-Ehle again represents the Nordic race, but now in company with other members of Sweden's cultural, political, economic and scientific elites depicted in the same volume. (From Herman Lundborg and Ivar Kramke, Svenskar i nutiden (1934), plate 31.)

Concluding remarks

The Swedish eugenics network sought to establish the legitimacy of the new specialty simultaneously in both a scientific and a political sense. In doing so it aimed to legitimize and naturalize the biopolitical power of eugenics and eugenicists. We may identify some important factors behind the network's initial success. First, it was situated at the interface between political and scientific elites, two groups whom Lundborg courted with his notion of ‘natural aristocracy’. Not only were most members of the network scientifically well respected and well connected, but they also had a number of colleagues in parliament and other high places whom they could approach on an equal social footing (probably exploiting established personal ties). This made it possible for the network's members to influence both science and politics simultaneously—in an attempt to reshape both.

A second important factor was the skilful use of media strategies. Backstage political lobbying was supplemented by various forms of front-stage media exposure—sometimes directed towards the ‘general public’, sometimes towards more limited audiences. The meaning of the concept ‘general public’ in this case is complex. Obviously the network was interested in influencing the views and behaviour of the middle class. At the same time it is clear that the very idea of popular support was as important as gaining ‘actual’ popular influence (which was anyway not measurable). The exhibition in 1919, the press reports regarding this event and the network's publications all evoked the impression that there existed a popular demand for eugenic reform. This impression was translated into political demands through the bill in 1920, in which it was said that physicians and researchers who insisted that a eugenics institute be created were backed by ‘a strong public opinion that cannot be silenced in the long run’.⁸²

Third, the academic legitimacy of eugenics was strengthened with the creation of academic platforms nationally and on the Nordic level—mostly with the help of a close association with genetics, on which eugenics was riding piggy-back. This connection was made possible by the fact that leading geneticists—most importantly Nilsson-Ehle—were firm supporters of the eugenic cause and acted as pillars of the eugenics network. Here, however, the eugenicists were less successful once the institute had been founded and they had to prove their own organizational capabilities.

Fourth, although this is as hard to measure as popular support, Lundborg and some network colleagues provided a coherent ideological framework exalting the racial qualities of the middle classes and parts of the rural population and naturalizing the power position of various mostly professional elites. However, full acceptance of Lundborg's vision would have entailed subsuming politics under biology, and in Sweden eugenics never came close to such a position.

With the establishment of eugenics, science and policy simultaneously changed their aspects. Science now included mainline eugenics within its boundaries, whereas welfare policy could use eugenic concepts as scientifically legitimate foundations for reform. However, in the longer run Lundborg's eugenic vision became politically problematic, not least because of the developments in Germany. Continued political support was assured only after 1935, when Lundborg retired and was replaced by a left-wing geneticist opposed to mainline eugenics. This was a (Social Democratic) government decision overriding an academic evaluation committee that had recommended Torsten Sjögren, the Nazi sympathizer, as a successor to Lundborg. […]

Acknowledgements

We thank Professor Gunnar Broberg for valuable comments on a draft version on the paper.

 

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