Archaic Facial Classifications
From 1938-39, Heinrich Himmler commissioned the Ahnenerbe, a scientific mission to Tibet to find the mythical origins of the Aryan race.
Aryan race validation tests were applied to determine whether a person was considered a “Jew” or "Non-Aryan".
Source: Universal History Archive Getty Images
"Bruno Beger, a young anthropologist… would take measurements of the skulls and facial details of Tibetans and make face masks, he said, "especially to collect material about the proportions, origins, significance and development of the Nordic race in this region."
Vaibhav Purandare, BBC, 2021
Eugenic Visions
The Nazi’s took a perspective towards racial and biological desirability as if breeding pedigree dogs. From the 19th century onwards, the US, then Germany were proponents of eugenics through sterilization, inhumane experimentation and mass genocide of whomever they considered Jewish, Roma, “social misfits”, disabled, mentally ill, politically dissident or queer. As early as 1920, German publications on the “mercy killing” of the “unfit” were mentioned by jurist Karl Binding and the psychiatrist Alfred Hoche.
Figurative view of the Reich’s imagined, greater german Reich that would be cleansed of “degenerate” populations and settled only by Aryan Germans. Image from Dokumentation Obersalzburg
The NDSAP Government preached the notion of Lebensrauhm (living space) as necessary for the survival and expansion of the Aryan-Nordic-Germanic race. By 1939 it became state-sanctioned policy to euthanize those deemed “unfit” according to Nazi laws, especially while they were children. This initiative was authorized by the ““Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring”, which was debuted in 1933.
It is easy find different cultural regimes that instated blood purity laws, racial profiling by skin color, or the regulation of one set of hereditary traits over another as ultimate example of eugenist racism. More often overlooked is the slippery slope of social norms that leads to violence and genocide of many.
Mass Data Collection
Arguably, the Nazis introduced some of the earliest forms of databasing (and bureaucracy) around identity verification and documents for racial classification, albeit with no scientific basis.
An example of a punch card sent to the Race and Settlement office
Edwin Black. “The Nazi Party: IBM & “Death’s Calculator” The Jewish Virtual Library
IBM Germany’s Hollerith Machine, the D11 Tabulator. otherwise known as “Death’s Calculator”.
“The Hollerith machine was a punch-card system consisting of three components, a punching machine that transmitted information onto punch cards, a sorting machine that arranged the punch cards by categories, and this tabulating machine that computed the results.”
Approximately 2000 Dehomag D11-tabulators were loaned to the NDSAP government during the war. Every concentration camp had one. The Dehomag (IBM Germany) produced equipment that aided in and capitalized on the mass extermination of Jewish people in the Holocaust.
Aryan Identification
Besides punchcards, personal identification cards, the NSDAP created tiers of bureaucracy for verifying race in Germany.
Aryan Certificates, or Ariernachweis, was crucial for attaining Reich citizenship, and required for all civic servants, in accordance with “The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” which was passed in 1933.
The Kleiner Ariernachweis (the “Lesser Aryan certificate”) were proven through either:
- 7 birth or baptism certificates (or a combination of both) from the person, their parents and grandparents, and 3 marriage certificates from their parents and grandparents
certified proofs of:
- Ahnenpaß (the “ancestor's passport”)
- Ahnentafel, a certified genealogy table
The Ahnenpass was published by the Zetnral Verlag of the NSDAP, the Nazi Party publishing house. Its purpose was to prove and record an individual's Aryan descent. All ancestors could be documented. Entries were checked by the church or municipal registrar's office. The Ahnenpas was mandatory for Nazi Party members, Wehrmacht officers, and SS.
Translation:
The Ancestral Passport
of
Name:
Place:
Address:
Telephone:
Issue 31 (with death assessments)
Excerpts from an Aryan certificate by the "Reichsverband der Standesbeamten Deutschlands (RDSD)" Union of Registrars of the Reich in Germany, 31st Edition (with death certificates) by Verlag für Standesamtswesen G.m.b.H. Berlin SW 61
Translation Below:
The Racial Principle.
The view, rooted in National Socialist thinking, that it is a people’s supreme duty to keep its race and blood clean from foreign influences and to eradicate the foreign blood strains that have penetrated the body politic, is based on the scientific findings of genetics and racial research. In accordance with the thinking of National Socialism, to allow every other people full justice, there is never talk of superior or inferior races, but only of foreign breeds.
The concept of Aryan descent.
Since, according to the results of racial theory, the German people, in addition to the determining influence of the Nordic race, also contains other more or less related racial components, which are also the building blocks of the neighboring European peoples, to a lesser extent and which cannot be calculated in terms of calculations, one has for this overriding concept of Entirety of the races contained in the German people the designation Aryan (Different from linguistics!) chosen, and thus the German and this blood closely related to a racial unit together. The term "German or kindred blood" has exactly the same scope in the Reich Citizenship Law.
Aryan descent (= "German-blooded") is therefore the person who, seen from the point of view of the German people, is free of a foreign blood strain. The blood of the Jews and Gypsies who also lived in the European settlement area, that of the Asian and African races and the natives of Australia and America is considered foreign here (Indians), while e.g. For example, an Englishman or Swede, a Frenchman or a Czech, a Pole or an Italian, if he himself is free from such blood stains, which are also foreign to him, must be regarded as related, i.e. as Aryan, whether he is in his homeland, in East Asia or in America reside or may he be a citizen of the U.S.A. or a South American Free State.
That we z. B. (sic) for a marriage of the German national comrade, the girl of pure German descent is closer than another Aryan of more distant racial relationship, is self-evident.
In any case, it is the duty and task of the individual to provide proof of his Aryan descent in accordance with the regulations applicable to him, in many cases also with regard to the spouse.
Green certificate on white background with title "Prüfungsergebnis." Includes illustration of Eagle and Swastika
“The official Nazi certification of pure Aryan German blood, or Abstammungsnachweis, was required of any citizen who wished to exercise his or her civil rights, or join the Nazi Party. This one -- number 92444 -- bears the Eagle and Swastika seal. It certifies that Franz Gerstorfer is "Deutchbluttig (Arisch)" or of pure Aryan German blood, and that he is not of Jewish or mixed Jewish (or "Mischling") ancestry.” - Michael D. Bulmash
The Großer Ariernachweis (Greater Aryan certificate) was required for membership in the Nazi party. Gaining this certificate required tracing of family ancestry down to 1800, or 1750 for SS officers. According to Nuremberg Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour of 1935, only those (reaching back to January 1, 1800) who could prove none of their paternal nor their maternal ancestors had Jewish or colored blood would be eligible.
The nationalist, eugenist basis of this law originates from Richard Walter Darré’s guiding metaphors of blood and soil for "preserve the farming community as the blood-source of the German people" in Neuadel aus Blut und Boden (A New Nobility Based On Blood And Soil).
Chart describing the Nuremberg Laws of 15 September 1935 and the respective regulation of 14 November 1935. The "Nuremberg Laws" established a legal basis for racial identification. Only people with four non-Jewish German grandparents (four white circles in top row left) were of "German blood".
A Jew was defined by the Nazis as someone who descended from three or four Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right).
In the middle stood people of "mixed blood" of the "first or second degree."
A Jewish grandparent was defined as a person who was ever a member of a Jewish religious community. Also includes a list of allowed marriages (Ehe gestattet) and forbidden marriages (Ehe verboten).
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