Volkskörper
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Volkskörper
The ''Volkskörper'', literally translated as either "national body" or "body national", was the "ethnic body politic" in German population science beginning in the second half of the 19th century. It was increasingly defined in terms of racial biology and was incorporated into Nazi racial theories. After 1945 the term was largely used synonymously with population in anthropology and geography (similarly to '' ethnicity'' or '' nation-state''). In political parlance, however, the ''Volkskörper'' served as a metaphor for an organic and biological understanding of the unity between the ''Volk'' and the ''Volksgemeinschaft'', its broader society. In German politics during the 19th and 20th centuries, it was used especially in anti-Semitic and racial hygiene texts to semantically differentiate the ''Volk'', conceived as a biological and racial unit, from so-called "parasites", "pests" and "diseases". In this naturalistic sense "excretion" was construed in such a way as to define elem ...
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Body Politic
The body politic is a polity—such as a city, realm, or state—considered metaphorically as a physical body. Historically, the sovereign is typically portrayed as the body's head, and the analogy may also be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of Aesop's fable of "The Belly and the Members". The image originates in ancient Greek philosophy, beginning in the 6th century BC, and was later extended in Roman philosophy. Following the high and late medieval revival of the Byzantine ''Corpus Juris Civilis'' in Latin Europe, the "body politic" took on a jurisprudential significance by being identified with the legal theory of the corporation, gaining salience in political thought from the 13th century on. In English law the image of the body politic developed into the theory of the king's two bodies and the Crown as corporation sole. The metaphor was elaborated further from the Renaissance on, as medical knowledge based on Galen was challenged by think ...
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Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. In addition to political philosophy, Hobbes contributed to a diverse array of other fields, including history, jurisprudence, geometry, theology, and ethics, as well as philosophy in general. Biography Early life Thomas Hobbes was born on 5 April 1588 (Old Style), in Westport, now part of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England. Having been born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, Hobbes later reported that "my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear." Hobbes had a brother, Edmund, about two years older, as well as a sister named Anne. Although Thomas Hobbes's childhood is unknown to a large extent, as is his mother's name, it is known that Hobbes's fat ...
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Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germany. Volume 1 of was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926. The book was edited first by Emil Maurice, then by Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess. Hitler began while imprisoned following his failed coup in Munich in November 1923 and a trial in February 1924 for high treason, in which he received a sentence of five years. Although he received many visitors initially, he soon devoted himself entirely to the book. As he continued, he realized that it would have to be a two-volume work, with the first volume scheduled for release in early 1925. The governor of Landsberg noted at the time that "he itlerhopes the book will run into many editions, thus enabling him to fulfill his financial obligations and to defray the expenses incurred at the t ...
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Theodor Lewald
Theodor Lewald (18 August 1860 – 15 April 1947) was a civil servant in the German Reich and an executive of the International Olympic Committee. He was the President of the Olympic organising committee for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Early life Lewald was born in 1860; his aunt was Jewish novelist Fanny Lewald. Lewald became a civil servant in Prussia in 1885, and became the acting Reich Commissioner in 1903. In that role, Lewald attended the 1904 Worlds Fair (held along with the Olympic Games), where he disagreed with Kaiser Wilhelm II over whether the Deutscher Olympischer Sportbund, of which he was the President, should be politically independent. After Berlin won the right to stage the 1916 Summer Olympics (which were later cancelled due to the outbreak of World War I), Lewald encouraged the German Reich to invest in the games, arguing that it was comparable to a World Trade Exhibition. By the end of World War I Lewald was so well connected as the highest c ...
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Wilhelm Schallmayer
Friedrich Wilhelm Schallmayer (February 10, 1857 – October 4, 1919) was Germany's first advocate of eugenics who, along with Alfred Ploetz, founded the German eugenics movement. Schallmayer made a lasting impact on the eugenics movement. Early life and academics After graduation from secondary school in 1876, Schallmayer joined the army as a one-year volunteer. However, due to a "loss of fitness for military duty," caused by overexertion from a military exercise, Schallmayer was discharged from the military, and the potential of a military career ended for him. Sheila Weiss wrote that his brief and unhappy experience in the army likely led to his life-long anti-militarism. Schallmayer was the first born of eleven children and was able to attend the university because his father owned a prosperous carriage and wagon business. Prior to studying medicine, Schallmayer studied philosophy and the social sciences. In 1881, Schallmayer enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine in Munich, ...
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First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdina ...
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Selective Breeding
Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant males and females will sexually reproduce and have offspring together. Domesticated animals are known as breeds, normally bred by a professional breeder, while domesticated plants are known as varieties, cultigens, cultivars, or breeds. Two purebred animals of different breeds produce a crossbreed, and crossbred plants are called hybrids. Flowers, vegetables and fruit-trees may be bred by amateurs and commercial or non-commercial professionals: major crops are usually the provenance of the professionals. In animal breeding, techniques such as inbreeding, linebreeding, and outcrossing are utilized. In plant breeding, similar methods are used. Charles Darwin discussed how selective breeding had been successful in producing change over time in ...
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Rudolf Goldscheid
Rudolf Goldscheid (12 August 1870 – 6 October 1931) was an Austrian writer and sociologist, co-founder of the German Sociological Association, known for his theory of human economy (german: Menschenökonomie, link=no) and for developing the topic of fiscal sociology. He has been described as "the founder of scientific sociology in Vienna", though he never had a job with a university. Life Rudolf Goldscheid was born in Vienna on 12 August 1870 as the fifth child of a Jewish family of merchants. After graduating from a Viennese secondary school, in 1891 he enrolled at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin to study philosophy and sociology, but quit without a degree in 1894. He remained in Germany for some years, writing novels and plays using the pseudonym Rudolf Golm, and married Marie Rudolph in Leipzig in 1898, returning to Vienna soon afterwards. Politically, Goldscheid was a pacifist and social democrat, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Austria and contributor to ...
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Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s. Social Darwinism holds that the strong see their wealth and power increase while the weak see their wealth and power decrease. Social Darwinist definitions of ''the strong'' and ''the weak'' vary, and also differ on the precise mechanisms that reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in ''laissez-faire'' capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism.Leonard, Thomas C. (2009"Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought" ''Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization'' 71, pp. 37–5 ...
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Adolf Stoecker
Adolf Stoecker (December 11, 1835 – February 2, 1909) was a German court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, a politician, leading antisemite, and a Lutheran theologian who founded the Christian Social Party to lure members away from the Social Democratic Workers' Party. Early life Stoecker was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony, in the Kingdom of Prussia. Stoecker's father was a blacksmith turned prison guard, and despite his poverty, Stoecker was able to attend university, which was unusual for a working-class man in the 19th century.Telman, Jeffrey "Adolf Stoecker: Anti-Semite with a Christian Mission" pages 93-112 from ''Jewish History'', Volume 9, Issue # 2. Fall 1995 page 99. An energetic and hardworking Protestant pastor who wrote widely on various social and political issues, Stoecker had a charismatic personality which made him one of Germany's best loved and most respected Lutheran clergyman.Green Harold "Adolf Stoecker: Portrait of a Demagogue" pages 106-12 ...
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Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s. Social Darwinism holds that the strong see their wealth and power increase while the weak see their wealth and power decrease. Social Darwinist definitions of ''the strong'' and ''the weak'' vary, and also differ on the precise mechanisms that reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in ''laissez-faire'' capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism.Leonard, Thomas C. (2009"Origins of the Myth of Social Darwinism: The Ambiguous Legacy of Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought" ''Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization'' 71, pp. 37–5 ...
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Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann
Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (13 May 1785, Wismar5 December 1860, Bonn) was a German historian and politician. Biography He came of an old Hanseatic family of Wismar, then controlled by Sweden. His father, who was burgomaster of the town, intended him to study theology, but Friedrich preferred classical philology, which he studied from 1802 to 1806 at the University of Copenhagen, University of Halle, and then again at Copenhagen. After finishing his studies, he translated some of the Greek tragic poets, and The Clouds of Aristophanes. But he was also interested in modern literature and philosophy; and the troubles of the times, of which he had personal experience, aroused in him a strong feeling of German patriotism, though throughout his life he was always proud of his connection with Scandinavia, and Gustavus Adolphus was his particular hero. In 1809, on the outbreak of war in Austria, Dahlmann, together with the poet Heinrich von Kleist, whom he had met in Dresden, went t ...
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