''Das Erbe'' ("The Inheritance")Poore (1997), p. 110 was a

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

propaganda movie published in 1935.Zimmermann (2005), p. 214 Produced by Harold Mayer under the aegis of the

Nazi party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

's Office of Racial Policy and directed by Carl C. Hartmann, it aimed at legitimizing the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring ("''Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses''"), which allowed for sterilization. The movie is 12 minutes long, and was shown as part of several trailers in contemporary German movie theaters.

Plot and message

The plot was written by Walter Lüddeke.Augen-Blick 22.1995, p. 80 The basic message, that only the strong and healthy are victorious, is demonstrated by fighting stag beetles commented on by a "professor",Zimmermann (2005), p. 95 e.g. stag beetles in the intro. These clips are watched by the character Fräulein Volkmann, a blonde young woman, who is therewith introduced to the "struggle for existence". After watching the clips, Volkmann is astonished and says to the friendly, elderly professor: "So animals actually pursue a racial policy!"Zimmermann (2005), as cited at mediaculture-online.de In the second part, the movie discusses the sorrow of the disabled and posits a relation between choice of the right partner and hereditary diseases of the offspring. The message is carried by shock clips of asylum patients and presentation of the high care cost. Peter Zimmermann of the House of Documentary Film in Stuttgart evaluates the movie as follows:

The short movie ''Das Erbe'' (1935), which leads over from the animals' struggle for survival and
natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Cha ...
to a plea for forced sterilization of the mentally ill, marks exactly the point where
Social Darwinist 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 We ...

biologism Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, whether i ...
turns into Fascist racial policy providing the reasoning for the necessity of euthanasia.Zimmermann (2003), quote: "Der Kurzfilm Das Erbe (1935), der vom Existenzkampf in der Tierwelt und der Auslese der Arten zum Plädoyer für die Zwangssterilisierung Geisteskranker überleitet, bezeichnet genau den Punkt, an dem ein sozialdarwinistischer Biologismus in eine faschistische Rassenpolitik umschlägt, die die Notwendigkeit der Euthanasie argumentatorisch vorbereitet."

In addition to ''Das Erbe'', two

silent movies A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, whe ...

were produced in 1935 to propagate euthanasia in the German population, '' Sünden der Väter'' and '' Abseits vom Wege'' ("Sins of the Fathers" and "Off track").Matzek (2002), p. 277 In the subsequent years, the media campaign was completed by another sound movie, "'' Opfer der Vergangenheit''" ("Sacrifice of the Past", 1937) and three more silent movies, "'' Erbkrank''" ("Inherited Malady", 1936), "'' Alles Leben ist Kampf''" ("All Life is Struggle", 1937) and "'' Was du ererbst''" ("What You Inherit", 1939). All these movies were produced by the Office of Racial Policy, shot in the Berlin area, and shown nationwide in movie theaters, factories and at Nazi party events, and together reached an audience of twenty million per year.Poore (1997), p. 111 Together with ''Erbkrank'' and ''Alles Leben ist Kampf'', ''Das Erbe'' reflects the spirit of the

Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of ...

by subordinating the people to the authority of a superior "breeder's" cost-benefit analysis.Reichert (2006), p. 53

Notes

Sources

References

Bibliography

* * * * * *, **cited in https://web.archive.org/web/20100131063204/http://www.mediaculture-online.de/fileadmin/bibliothek/zimmermann_propaganda/zimmermann_propaganda.html, retrieved 2010-02-21 * **hardback
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**pp. 505–529, 554–567 as cited by https://web.archive.org/web/20070927012529/http://www.mediaculture-online.de/fileadmin/bibliothek/zimmermann_propagandafilm/zimmermann_propagandafilm.html#sdfootnote22anc, retrieved: 2010-02-21 *

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