In many ways, Herman Lundborg was an outstanding individual. The results of his research revolutionized clinical genetics. Unfortunately, at some point he became interested in the issue of the so-called race hygiene, and his theses fell on fertile ground. And led to the tragedy of tens of thousands of people who were sterilized against their will ....
Lundborg assumed that "it must never be forgotten that the greatest wealth of a nation is its people, and therefore healthy and good genetic material." Therefore, he devoted almost his entire scientific career (and he had considerable achievements in this field - first he graduated from medical studies, then habilitated in the field of psychiatry and neurology, as well as racial biology, and in 1915 he became a professor at Uppsala University) to the issue of race purity. In his dissertations he argued that:
Under no circumstances can a favorable environment improve the quality of a people who are essentially worthless or racially unhelpful, such as Gypsies or Negroes. It is likewise possible to improve the quality of the lowest fallen strata in cultural societies to a similar extent, for example, individuals who routinely break accepted norms, vagabonds, imbeciles and the mediocre.
One for all
To save Swedish society from this degenerative scourge, even created his own version of the Ten Commandments . In them, he called for, among other things, to spread knowledge of racial culture in speech and writing, to combat (preferably by sterilization) severe social diseases, such as alcoholism, tuberculosis or venereal diseases, and to eliminate degenerate individuals that make up the "social quagmire" .
Herman Lundborg has introduced forced sterilization in Sweden
For his radical slogans, the professor naturally created an appropriately "strong" scientific foundation. He did not have to make any special effort - it turned out that to prove his thesis, it was enough to study the history of ... one family originating from the Blekinge region. Wiktoria Michałkiewicz in the book A Country Not for Everyone. About Swedish nationalism he reports:
On dozens of charts, he wrote down a whole list of conditions leading to the degeneration of a once high-ranking family:homosexuality, idleness, dullness and mental illness.
Moreover, after examining 2,232 people, general relationships emerged (...) - blondes and blue-eyed people showed above-average abilities, unlike the dark-haired and dark-eyed representatives of the mixed race, among whom all kinds of degeneration were to prevail.
The study itself might not have brought such significant effects, if not for the fact that the professor directly translated the conclusions into the entire Swedish population. On this basis, in 1914 he calculated in detail that there are a total of 280,000 "middle class" people in the country , including about 18,000 mentally ill, 14,000 "idiots", at least 20,000 "half-idiots" (imbeciles), 7,000 "epileptics", as well as tens of thousands of alcoholics, vagrants, criminals, prostitutes and other "anti-social element" .
With a population of only 5.5 million (this is the country's population), these numbers must have made an impression. And they did - so much that Lundborg's subsequent ideas gained support from both the right and the left of the political scene.
Love is (racially) blind
Interestingly, although the purity of the Swedish breed clearly was very close to his heart, he did not follow his own rules. Well, love doesn't choose. During his research in Lapland, he caught his eye Maria Isaakson, dark-haired, according to his own classification, belonging to the East Baltic race with a touch of Lapland (and therefore - foreign).
They soon moved in with each other (although officially the woman was Lundborg's cleaner, the professor had a racially pure wife), and even had a mixed-race son, Allan. Lundborg wrote about people like him:
As a result of mixing two different races, most often units with a disharmonious combination of features arise. Among them, there are sometimes eminently gifted individuals, but most often of bizarre nature. It is not uncommon for such persons to indulge in debauchery and crime.
Herman Lundborg corresponded with Himmler himself
The relationship did not survive the test of time, and Herman Lundborg's love for "the most beautiful Swedish skulls" turned out to be much more lasting. In 1921, he became director of the world's first publicly funded State Institute of Race Biology.
The main goal of the institution was to scientifically justify the thesis that failure to act on racial issues would contribute to the extinction of the Western world. The experts employed in it proved that the "lower" races reproduce faster than the "better quality" races. Therefore, they proposed, inter alia, introduction of the law on compulsory sterilization. Successfully. The Swedish parliament adopted it on May 18, 1934.
Conquests with the devil
Earlier, in January 1932, Lundborg gained support for his radical ideas from a completely different side. His unexpected - albeit a welcome - henchman was none other than Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. In a letter sent to the Baltic, he wrote that "Jewry, which is a mixture of Negroid, Hittite, Mongolian and European influences, ranks far below the Nordic race," and named the professor among "the best scientists and racially conscious personalities in all of Europe."
In the following years, German-Swedish cooperation flourished. Himmler's protégés made full use of the arsenal of "racial" research methods developed by scientists from Sweden. The latter, on the other hand, watched the Nazis' actions with fascination and asked:“How many sterilizations were carried out in Germany in 1933 (have men and women)? How much in 1934? How many in 1935? ”.
They themselves were to achieve impressive success in this field - legislative changes, which were introduced based on their findings, were in force for over 40 years. By 1975, when the law was finally abolished, nearly 63,000 people were deprived of fertility.
What about Lundborg? Soon support for him (though not for his ideas) began to wane. In 1935, as director of the Institute of Race Biology (later renamed the Institute of Medical Genetics), he was replaced by Gunnar Dahlberg, openly advocating his anti-Nazi views and seeking to change the profile of the institution into a research unit dealing with hereditary diseases, not race issues.
The legacy of the predecessor in the form of huge collections of human skulls and casts of heads, as well as detailed racial documentation of about 100,000 Swedes, went to warehouses. Which does not mean that the controversial professor was also put aside. Later that year, he became an honorary member of the New York Academy of Sciences and began editing a scientific journal on racial purity. He died in 1943 at the age of 75. His legacy in the form of the law on compulsory sterilization, unfortunately, survived much longer ...
Source:
The text is based on the shocking reportage by Wiktoria Michałkiewicz "Country not for everyone. About Swedish Nationalism ”, which has just been published by Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.