Explores the course of development of German seroanthropology from its origins in World War I until the end of the Third Reich. Gives an all encompassing interpretation of how the discovery of blood groups in around 1900 galvanised not only old mythologies of blood and origin but also new developments in anthropology and eugenics in the 1920s and 1930s. Boaz portrays how the personal motivations of blood scientists influenced their professional research, ultimately demonstrating how conceptually indeterminate and politically volatile the science of race was under the Nazi regime.

Contrary to sustained efforts, the search for the “Aryan” blood did not materialize into the racial utopia that the Nazi officials had dreamed. Moreover, the monograph convincingly demonstrates how ambiguous the relationship between eugenics, seroanthropology and anti-Semitism was in Germany, not least because proeminent German eugenicists and race scientists were Jewish or of Jewish origin.

LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter I INTRODUCTION

Chapter II THE EMERGENCE OF BLOOD SCIENCE

            “Contagious Blood” in German Fiction and Early Blood Science

            Origins of Serology

The Völkisch Notion of “Blood Defilement

Seroanthropology

Jewish Physicians and Blood Science

Postwar Blood Science

Chapter III SEROANTHROPOLOGY IN THE EARLY 1920S. BLOOD, RACE, AND EUGENICS

Frigyes Verzár and Oszkár Weszeczky: Seroanthropological Research in Hungary

Surveying “Native Germans”

Blood Type and Genetic Inferiority

Völkisch Research

IV ORGANIZING SEROANTHROPOLOGY: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GERMAN INSTITUTE FOR BLOOD GROUP RESEARCH

Otto Reche and Racial Anthropology.

The German Institute for Blood Group Research

Chapter V SEROANTHROPOLOGY AT ITS HEIGHT: DISTINGUISHING THOSE WITH “PURE BLOOD”

Studies of “Native Germans”

Biased Research

Chapter VI THE JEW AS EXAMINER AND EXAMINED

Manoiloff’s “Serochemistry” and Jewish Blood

Seroanthropological Analysis of Jews

Völkisch Propaganda

Jews and Seroanthropology

Chapter VII BLOOD AS METAPHOR AND SCIENCE IN THE NUREMBERG RACE LAWS

Seroanthropology in 1933

Proponents of Seroanthropology

Racial “Reform” under Nazism

“Blood Defilement”

Diverse Means of “Blood Defilement”

Seroanthropological Research in the Third Reich

The German Institute for Blood Group Research

Chapter VIII THE PEDAGOGY AND PRACTICE OF SEROANTHROPOLOGY DURING WORLD WAR II

Seroanthropology and National Socialist Medicine

Seroanthropological Research

Seroanthropology and Nazi Racial Ideology

Clinical Serology

Chapter IX CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

American Historical Review

"Seroanthropology was a branch of science that sought to identify race through blood. Paradoxically, it was neglected during the Third Reich by the Nazi government, which was keenly interested in being able to identify an individual’s race. Rachel E. Boaz’s book explains why.... Boaz’s book begs the question: is this an example of science and medicine trumping ideology? Did Nazi officials, despite being obsessed with the racial sorting of people under their control, reject blood type research because it was not rigorous science?"

Medical History

"There is an enormous literature on this subject and its surrounding areas. It is not easy to find something here that nobody has heard before. Yet Rachel Boas’s recension of the whole matter brings out something that was not obvious: that the effort to scientise the rhetoric of race through serology, apposite as it would have been in interwar Germany, failed mainly through its rejection by the scientists themselves. Even the chemical colour test for race of E.O. Manoiloff was not taken up by the medical community or by the Nazi authorities, though popular journalism touted it excitedly."