Race Biology in Sweden (Homo Sapiens 1900)

[EliasAlucard]

Homo Sapiens 1900 is a 1998 documentary directed by Peter Cohen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cohen), about various eugenics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics) methods that were in practise in Europe during the first part of the 20th century.

Homo Sapiens 1900
Directed by Peter Cohen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cohen)
Release date(s) 30 October 1998
Running time 88 min.
Country Sweden (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden)
Language English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language)Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sapiens_1900

Has anyone seen this documentary? I intend to buy it on DVD, but I haven't done it yet. Interesting but short excerpt on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3juX8ASLns0

Is the documentary objective and impartial, or is it a politically motivated documentary with an anti-eugenics agenda?

[Ubirajara]

Few people know that sterilization in the name of eugenics existed in Sweden until the 70's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3juX8ASLns0


"In 1997, following the publication of articles by Maciej Zaremba in the Dagens Nyheter daily, widespread attention was given to the fact that Sweden once operated a strong sterilization program. The Swedish state subsequently paid out damages to many of the victims. The program was meant primarily to prevent mental illness and disease. In 1922 a state Institute of Racial Biology was founded in Uppsala and in 1927 Parliament began to deal with the first legal provisions on sterilisation. A new draft was produced in 1932, already taking into account sterilisation for general socio-prophylactic reasons, and even without the consent of the person concerned. The draft was adopted in 1934. Another law, passed in 1941, did not include any age of consent limit. As in Canada and the US, racial politics also became involved, as there was a strong belief in the connection between race and genetic integrity among leading scientists and those carrying out the sterilizations. The Swedish Racial Hygiene Society had been founded in Stockholm in 1909, and the 1934 works by Alva and Gunnar Myrdal was very significant in promoting the eugenic tendencies in practical politics. The authors theorized that the best solution for the Swedish welfare state ("folkhem") was to prevent at the outset the hereditary transfer of undesirable characteristics that caused the individual affected to become sooner or later a burden on society. The authors therefore proposed a "corrective social reform” under which sterilisation was to prevent "unviable individuals” from spreading their undesirable traits. In the later decades it was primarily the mentally ill who were forcibly sterilized".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilization#Sweden

In Sweden, the "Sterilization Act of 1934" provided for the sterilization of some mental patients. The law was passed while the Swedish Social Democratic Party was in power, though it was also supported by all other political parties in Parliament at the time, as well as the Lutheran Church and much of the medical profession. From about 1934 to until 1975, Sweden sterilized more than 62,000 people, with Herman Lundborg in the lead of the project. Sweden sterilized more people than any other European state except Nazi Germany. More people were sterilized in 1948 than any other year. Sweden's large-scale eugenics program targeted the deviant and the mentally ill. As was the case in other programs, ethnicity and race were believed to be connected to mental and physical health. There is proof that the program targeted women. The goal of the program was to decrease deviant offspring. If one member of a family was considered deviant the whole family became the target of an investigation. It was perceived to be easier to persuade a woman to be sterilized than it was to persuade a man. For this reason women were more often sterilized than men, despite the fact that the medical procedure involved in the sterilization was simpler to carry out on a man.Even as far as 1996, social democrats rejected paying compensation to victims, which was criticized by some former members of the party. In 1999 the Swedish government began paying compensation to the victims and their families, but only 21,000 USD and only to those who had "not consented" and who applied for the compensation. From about 1934 to until 1975, Sweden sterilized more than 62,000 people, with Herman Lundborg in the lead of the project. Sweden sterilized more people than any other European state except Nazi Germany.


"Herman Bernhard Lundborg (April 7, 1868, Väse - 1943) was a Swedish physician. He graduated in medicine at the Karolinska Institutet in 1895, and received his doctorate at the Uppsala University in 1903. He also habilitated there that year for psychiatry and neurology, and in 1915 for racial biology. In the beginning of the twentieth century, the ideology that eugenics could somehow improve society in general strongly evolved. In 1922, Sweden became the first country in the world to establish a State Institute of Racial Biology in Uppsala, and Lundborg was appointed as the head upon its founding. Under his leadership, the institute began gathering copious statistics and photographs to map the racial make-up of about 100,000 Swedish people. This research later became one of the foundations under a eugenic program of the Swedish government, which consisted of both voluntary and involuntary sterilization of persons with negative genetic characteristics. The program was started in 1935 and would last until 1975".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Lundborg

[g-man]

These programs existed in Denmark and Finland, no?

Here in the U.S., the fact that this kind of thing existed in social democracies doesn’t sit well with many left/liberals that see these societies as ideal and eugenics as something only racist Nazis supported.

[Wojewoda]

"In 1997, following the publication of articles by Maciej Zaremba in the Dagens Nyheter daily, widespread attention was given to the fact that Sweden once operated a strong sterilization program.

What is extremely weird Maciej Zaremba's own father Oskar Bielawski was one of the most important proponents of eugenics in the pre-war Poland (http://www.tiergartenstrasse4.org/Dr_Bielawski_and_Eugenics,216.html)!

[EliasAlucard]

Merged with old thread.

//mod

[Aino]

These programs existed in Denmark and Finland, no?


Yes, eugenics was legally practised in Finland from 1935 to 1970. It included sterilising mentally retarded and mentally ill persons. And before the eugenics law of 1935, mentally retarded persons were already being illegally sterilised in the only state-owned mental institution in Finland.

I can actually understand the reasoning behind the Finnish eugenics program. There was a concern that mentally deficient people could not control their sexual urges and would therefore bear more children than mentally healthy people. This was seen to lead to an ever increasing share of the population being retarded. Criminality rates were also on the increase, and retarded people were seen as having an inclination to crime, rapes, arsons, and prostitution. The state did not have enough funds to place the already existing feeble-minded persons in mental institutions. Nor did it have enough funds to increase prison capacity. So sterilisation was seen as an answer for lowering criminality and controlling state expenses.

Even before 1935, the Marriage Act of 1929 had prohibited marriage of mentally retarded or mentally ill persons. Those who suffered from inherited epilepsy or had a contagious sexually transmitted disease needed to obtain a special marriage license from the president. Marriages between two deaf-mute persons were also dependant on getting a president's license. But the statutory impediments were not enough, because people can have sex and procreate without getting married.

All in all, about 57,000 people were sterilised in Finland, which is close to the number of people Sweden sterilised.