Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

courtesy of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum-Archiv zur Geshichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin-Dahlem

Dr. Otmar von Verschuer examines twins at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's Department for Human Heredity. Verschuer, a physician and geneticist, examined hundreds of pairs of twins to study whether criminality, feeble-mindness, tuberculosis, and cancer were inheritable. In 1927, he recommended the forced sterilization of the "mentally and morally subnormal." Verschuer typified those academics whose interest in Germany's "national regeneration" provided motivation for their research.