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Health Reform and Race Hygiene: Adventists and the Biomedical Vision of the Third Reich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Roland Blaich
Roland Blaich
Affiliation:
Mr. Blaich is professor of history at Walla Walla College, College Place, Washington
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Extract

German Seventh-day Adventists entered the Nazi era with apprehension. As a foreign sect which resembled Judaism in many respects, Adventists were particularly threatened by a society based on the principle of völkisch racism. Yet the new state also had much to offer them, for it held the prospect of new opportunities for the church. The Nazi state banished the scourge of liberalism and godless Bolshevism, it restored conservative standards in the domestic sphere, and it took effective steps to return German society to a life in harmony with nature—a life Adventists had long championed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , September 1996 , pp. 425 - 440
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1996

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References

1. Adventist church membership in Nazi Germany was about forty thousand, and the church employed some five hundred pastors and eight hundred staff in its publishing work.Google ScholarSee Hartlapp, Johannes, “Die Lage der Gemeinschaft der Siebenten-Tags-Adventisten in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus” (Predigerseminar Friedensau, unpublished thesis, 1979), p. 92.Google Scholar On Adventist apprehensions, see “An unsere Gemeindeglieder in Deutschland,” circular by Mueller, Wilhelm, Der Adventbote [hereafter AB] (15 August 1933).Google Scholar

2. Volkisch nationalists believed that cultural superiority is a function of race. In Nazi usage, the word carried strong anti-Semitic, chauvinist, and nationalistic connotations.Google Scholar

3. The “right arm of the message” has long been used in Adventist circles as a metaphor for the denomination's medical work. The prophetess of Adventism, White, Ellen G., used the metaphor repeatedly;Google Scholaran example is found in Christian Service (Takoma Park, Md., 1947), p. 134.Google ScholarThe initial historian of the church, tracing the origins of the church's medical work, refers to it as “that which afterward should be as the right arm and hand to the body in the rapid advancement of the work”;Google ScholarLoughborough, J. N., “Sketches of the Past—No. 129,” Pacific Union Recorder, 22 08 1912, p. 1.Google Scholar

4. Hitler was a vegetarian and did not smoke or drink. Rudolf Hess, the deputy of the Führer, supported natural homeopathic medicine. Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, believed in an “organic” lifestyle. Julius Streicher, a fanatical anti-Semite, was head of Germany's largest organic health movement.Google Scholar See Proctor, Robert N., Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 225.Google Scholar

5. Proctor, , Racial Hygiene, pp. 223–241.Google Scholar

6. Ibid., pp. 10–45.

7. Ibid., p. 17. Eugenics movements also flourished in England, Norway, France, Sweden, the Soviet Union, and the United StatesGoogle Scholar; see ibid., pp. 285–286, and Weindling, Paul, Health, Race, and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945 (Cambridge, U.K., 1989), pp. 432–433.Google Scholar

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10. Mayer, Joseph, Gesetzliche Unfruchtbarmachung Geisteskranker (Freiburg, Germany, 1927); excerpts reprinted in Klee, pp. 40–46. Mayer was a Catholic moral theologian.Google Scholar

11. In a speech of 28 June 1933 which was cited in the Adventist health journal, Nazi interior minister Wilhelm Frick described the genetic uplifting of the German race as the chief task of the Nazi government; Gute Gesundheit [hereafter GG] (December 1935): 179. Rudolf Hess denned National Socialism as “nothing but applied biology”;Google Scholar quoted in Lifton, Robert Jay, The Nazi Doctors (New York, 1986), p. 31.Google Scholar

12. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf (Boston, Mass., 1943), pp. 403–4104.Google Scholar

13. For a listing of other laws, see Proctor, , p. 103.Google Scholar

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15. Fischdick, Eberhard, Helfende Hdnde: Die Geschkhte des Advent-Wohlfahrtswerkes (Darmstadt, Germany, 1988), pp. 38–40.Google Scholar On Jost's activities, see also Blaich, Roland, “Selling Nazi Germany Abroad: The Case of Hulda Jost,” Journal of Church and State 35 (Autumn 1993): 807–830.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. AB (1 November 1933): 327; and AB (1 September 1933): 261.Google Scholar

17. Directives for the AWW, 16 July 1934, Ungeordnet (Bestand Hannover), Archiv für Europäische Adventgeschichte [hereafter AEA], Darmstadt, Germany;Google Scholarand Fischdick, p. 45. Jost was responsible to the government;Google Scholarsee AB (1 April 1934): 103;Google Scholarand Supplement to AB (15 October 1934): 4 pp.Google Scholar

18. AB (4 April 1934).Google Scholar

19. Among her contacts in the Propaganda Ministry were Dr. Thomalla, Curt R., head of its Health and Social Services section and also the author of several films on eugenics;Google Scholarsee Weindling, pp. 380, 412. Judging from Jost's reports about the often informal nature of their meetings, Jost and Thomalla were probably friends. Jost also developed a close relationship with Reichsleiter Erich Hilgenfeld. In the judgment of German Adventist leadership, the AWW was now under the protection of the government;Google ScholarSchubert, G. W. to Watson, C. H., 29 07 1934, RG11 (Presidential) 1934–1936–Schubert, G. W., archives of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists [hereafter GC], Silver Spring, Maryland. For a discussion of several instances where Jost's connections to Nazi leaders proved invaluable to the church, see Blaich, “Selling Nazi Germany,” pp. 820–825.Google Scholar

20. AB (1 November 1933): 329.Google Scholar

21. “Berlin, Ende August 1933,” special four-page issue of AB. The “Guidelines for Evaluating Genetic Health” of 18 July 1940 is an example of how this principle was formalized. In March 1941, rules governing appropriations for children stated: “The aim of this population policy is to strengthen the German people. Therefore, considerations of charity and social welfare must be avoided in decisions on granting or refusing children's allowances” (emphasis added);Google Scholar cited in Aly, Götz, “Medicine Against the Useless,” in Aly, Gotz, Chroust, Peter, and Pross, Christian, Cleansing the Fatherland: Nazi Medicine and Racial Hygiene (Baltimore, Md., 1994), p. 52.Google Scholar

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23. Ibid., No. 00059–60; and Jost, Hulda, “Was tun die Adventisten in der Wohlfahrtspflege? Jahresbericht für 1936/37.”Google Scholar

24. Jost, Hulda, “Winterhilfswerk 1935–1936,” in AB (15 11 1935): 346–348.Google Scholar

25. Brozio, Otto, “Volksgemeinschaft,” Heroldder Wahrheit [hereafter HW] 55, no. 8 (1938): 117.Google Scholar

26. For a summary of Jost's work and thought, see Hartlapp, , “Die Lage,” pp. 52–57.Google Scholar

27. Other acquaintances were King Boris III of Bulgaria, Czech president Thomas G. Masaryk, and Lady Aberdeen;Google ScholarFischdick, p. 46;Google ScholarBlaich, “Selling Nazi Germany,” p. 824;Google Scholarand Hartlapp, p. 56 n. 4.Google Scholar

28. Mahlo, Friedrich, Propaganda Ministry to Reich Ministry of the Interior, 23 July 1938, RKM 51.01/23388, No. 00062, BA Potsdam. Mahlo certified that the denomination “affirmed the National Socialist state and served it as best it could.”Google Scholar

29. Mueller, Wilhelm, “Berlin, Ende August 1933,” AEA, Ul-2, No. 0113.Google Scholar

30. Edener, W., “Volksfeind Alkohol,” AB (15 02 1935): 45.Google Scholar

31. This was particularly the case during 1939, the “Year of Healthful Living”; GO (March 1939): 34.Google Scholar

32. Report by Luehr, W. at the presidents' convention of the MED, 31 May to 5 June 1939, AEA.U1–2, No. 0075.Google Scholar

33. GG (December 1937): 188.Google Scholar

34. “Bericht über die Reichstagung der Deutschen Lebensreformbewegung,” GG (10 1938): 158–159.Google Scholar

35. Schneider, E., “Arbeitswille und Arbeitskraft: Die Waffen der inneren Front,” GG (06 1940): 43.Google Scholar

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37. “Ein Volksfiend,” Gegenwartsfragen [hereafter GF] (01–02 1939): 14.Google Scholar

38. “Du und der Krieg,” GF (07–08 1942): 53–54; and GG (December 1935): 189.Google Scholar

39. In 1932 at least one Adventist journal, Kirche und Staat (Church and State), still rejected the principle of racism and race hygiene. “Not völkisch imperatives, a return to the concept of blood [Besinnung aufs Blut], not racial hygiene and eugenics will bring the hoped-for salvation,” it cautioned; Kirche und Staat [hereafter KS] (April 1932): 55.Google ScholarSee also Busch, Max: “Here is the idea of self redemption through race and blood, which is in crass contradiction to redemption through Christ”;Google Scholar“Völkische Weltanschauung,” KS (02 1932): 25. The last implied rejection of the racial state appeared in Kirch und Staat in March 1993. Without comment it reprinted the text of the Altona Confession of January 1933, a declaration of concern and protest by Lutheran pastors;Google Scholar“Ein mutiges Wort in eruster Zeit,” KS (03 1933): 43–44. The journal ceased publication after the next issue, perhaps the price paid for an indiscretion.Google Scholar

40. “Volk und Staat,” GF (12 1933): 179–181.Google Scholar

41. “Heimat und Volkstum,” JL (07 1933).Google Scholar

42. Leschowsky, W., “Judas Fluch,” AB (1 04 1938): 102–104, wrote: “God had already stigmatized Abraham's sin against the blood, which he committed in his union with the Egyptian Hagar. It was then that [God] taught him the principles of the purity of blood.”Google Scholar

43. AB (1 April 1938): 103.Google Scholar

44. See, for example, “Die kulturgeschichtliche Aufgabe der Rassen und Volker,” GF (08 1934): 120–122;Google Scholar for examples from history of the destruction of nations which ignored the laws of nature, see Jost, Hulda, “Was tun die Adventisten in der Wohlfahrtspflege? Jahrsberichtfür 1935,” p. 32, AEA, B9–7.Google Scholar

45. Haeseler, S. R. D., “Vorwarts in der umgekehrten Richtung,” AB (15 01 1934): 18.Google ScholarBrozio, Otto, the leader of Adventist welfare after Jost's death in 1938, called the Nazi revolution ‘the greatest of all time” because it made the laws of heredity the basis of its ethnic life. A blocked quote from Hitler on the significance of blood served to reinforce his argument;Google Scholarin “Der Tätigkeitsbericht des Adventwohlfahrtswerkes,” AB (15 08 1938): 250–251.Google Scholar

46. Brehm, Willy, “Das Heimatgebiet der nordischen Rasse durch Geburtenrückgang im Kern bedroht,” GG (05 1937): 69.Google ScholarFor other articles on population policy see GG (09 1938): 133; and GF (March 1936).Google Scholar

47. Schneider, E., “Volk, Kraft und Gesundheit im Kriege,” GG (05 1941): 35.Google ScholarSchneider, argued that “The higher the health standard of a race, the higher its strength, which is best and most reliably evidenced in a high birth rate [Kinderreichtum].”Google ScholarFor other articles on the role of genetics in the survival of a fit race, see “Familie und Staat,” GF (02 1934); and GG (05 1935): 74–75.Google Scholar

48. The gruesome inhumanity sanctioned by this law is amply detailed in Klee, pp. 60–325;Google ScholarProctor, , pp. 177–222;Google ScholarBurleigh, pp. 43–161, 220–266;Google ScholarWeindling, pp. 522–574;Google ScholarFriedlander, Henry, The Origins of Nazi Genocide (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1995), pp. 23–186;Google Scholarand Aly, pp. 22–98.Google Scholar

49. von Rohden, A., “Verstoβt das Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses gegen das Gebot der Nachstenliebe? [Does the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Defect Progeny Violate the Commandment to Love One's Neighbor?],” JL (02 1934): 20.Google Scholar

50. GG (October 1933): 147.Google Scholar

51. GF (January 1934): 8; GF (November 1933): 170–172; and GG (October 1933): 146–147.Google Scholar