Amir Teicher. Social Mendelism

Using a dossier approach that includes textbooks, films, plays, court decisions, governmental letters, and other public correspondence as its main data sources, Amir Teicher's Social Mendelism explores how Mendel’s genetic theory influenced racial thinking in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century and how Mendelian representations grounded the application of eugenics policies. Johann Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk, investigated traits in cross-pollinated plants between 1856 and 1863. His theory was later applied, especially between 1913 and 1933, to human heredity. Mendelian thinking divided traits into dominant and recessive: if “heredity was continuous (that is, if the same trait manifested itself in parents and children) that trait was referred to as dominant; when heredity was discontinuous (skipping a generation or two) the trait was considered recessive” (p. 15). If a dominant factor was inherited from only one parent (e.g., brown eyes) the offspring would have the same trait. For...

Biology · Eugenics · Gene · Genealogy · Heredity · Mendelian inheritance · Political science · Politics · Race (biology) · Sociology · Trait · Gender Studies · Genetics · History · History of Science and Medicine · Law · Medical History and Research · Race, Genetics, and Society