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Volker Roelcke
24 November 2009 Oxford Brookes University, History of Medicine Seminar Series
In this lecture, Volker Roelcke details the history of the relationships between eugenics and medical genetics between 1910-1060, demonstrating that the history of eugenics can yield broader analytical tools for investigating the international dimension connecting medicine, science, and politics. Volker reconstructs the emergence of institutionalized research agendas in the field of psychiatric genetics in three national contexts, namely: The Genealogisch-Demographische Abteilung (GDA) at the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie in Munich founded in 1917/ 18; the Program (later: Department) of Medical Genetics at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and associated with Columbia University, founded in 1936; and the Psychiatric Genetics Unit at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, founded in 1959. The early protagonists of this field in Britain and the US, Eliot Slater and Franz Kallmann, had both been research fellows at the Munich GDA directed by Ernst Rüdin in the mid-1930s. Rüdin was perceived as the leading figure in the field internationally, and he also was a key protagonist of the German eugenics and racial hygiene, and collaborated with Nazi eugenic legislation after 1933. Not only Rüdin, but also Kallmann and Slater, were motivated by eugenic ideas throughout their careers, and engaged in eugenic organisations – if with different consequences and in different political contexts. Their case studies are used to illuminate the manner in which “globally” available concepts where subject to an international exchange, transfer, and local adaptation.
