Tool used to classify hair color in racial studies conducted in Nazi Germany

Dr. Eugen Fischer (1874-1967) was born to a Catholic family in Karlsruhe, Germany. He studied medicine and natural sciences at Freiburg University, and later became a professor of Anatomy and Anthropology at the Universities of Würzburg and Freiburg. Dr. Fischer published numerous works on his own, and with Dr. Erwin Baur and Dr. Fritz Lenz, all of whom were considered leaders in the German eugenics movement. Many themes and ideas from their works were incorporated into Nazi attitudes of racial superiority. Anthropology and the sub-discipline Anthropometry, the systematic identification and classification of a range of physical characteristics found within different populations of people, were both well-suited to the rising emphasis on eugenics, often referred to as racial hygiene, in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Many supporters linked eugenics to race, and believed that “race mixing,” modern medicine, keeping the “unfit” alive to reproduce, and costly welfare programs hindered natural selection and would lead to the biological “degeneration” of society. These ideas and practices began to inform government policy, and were absorbed into the ideology and platform of the newly formed Nazi Party during the 1920s. In 1927, Dr. Fischer became Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. From 1934 to 1935, he taught a course on anthropology, genetics, and eugenics, also called racial hygiene, for Schutzstaffel (SS) doctors. Many of Dr. Fischer’s theories about eugenics and miscegenation formed the supposedly scientific basis of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. They were also utilized as the justification for Aktion T-4, the Nazi euthanasia program for the “incurably sick.” While at the Institute, he ordered sterilizations and other eugenic procedures, and evaluated medical experiments carried out in euthanasia killing centers and concentration camps. In 1940, Dr. Fischer became an official member of the Nazi party. Later, he sent an assistant to the newly established Łódź ghetto to photograph the Jewish residents for a book he was planning to publish about his antisemitic beliefs. In 1942, he left the Institute and received a grant to study the effects of heredity versus environment on twins. Dr. Fischer appointed his protégé, Dr. Otmar von Verschuer, to lead the study. Von Verschuer passed the project on to a former graduate student, Dr. Josef Mengele. In May 1943, Dr. Mengele was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in German-occupied Poland, in order to perform experiments on Jewish and Roma twins and dwarves imprisoned there. After the war ended in May 1945, Dr. Fischer went through what the Allied powers called denazification: the effort to remove all traces of Nazi ideology, institutions, influence, and laws from Germany, as well as Nazi party members from offices or positions of responsibility. He was not prosecuted as a war criminal. The Nuremburg Doctors’ Trial (1946) presented some doctors, especially those at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, as having been manipulated by the SS and other Nazis, and were not affiliated with the concentration camps or killing centers. Instead, the SS and medical personnel, such as Dr. Mengele, who were directly involved with the camps and centers, were identified as those most responsible for the atrocities. Dr. Fischer returned to Freiburg University, and in1952, he was appointed honorary president of the German Anthropological Society.

Dr. Karl Saller (1902- 1969) was born in Kempten, Germany. He attended the University of Munich, where he studied anthropology and anatomy. He studied under anthropologist Rudolf Martin (1864–1925), who was well known in the field of eugenics. Saller earned a Ph.D. in 1924, with a thesis focused on studies of hair pigment in mixed-race populations. He also earned an MD in 1926, with a medical dissertation that examined skeletal morphology. Dr. Saller went on to become a lecturer in both subjects at the University of Kiel and Göttingen. He viewed human races as biological categories that were not rigid; the opposite view of many anthropologists and eugenicists of the era. Instead, Dr. Saller believed that race was constantly changing due to the interaction between the environment and genetics or heritage. His work fell within the field of Anthropometry, a sub-discipline of Anthropology that focused on the systematic identification and classification of a range of physical characteristics found within different populations of people. These disciplines were both well-suited to the rising emphasis on eugenics, often referred to as racial hygiene, in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Many supporters linked eugenics to race, and believed that “race mixing,” modern medicine, keeping the “unfit” alive to reproduce, and costly welfare programs hindered natural selection and would lead to the biological “degeneration” of society. These ideas and practices began to inform government policy, and were absorbed into the ideology and platform of the newly formed Nazi Party during the 1920s. Like many others in his field, Dr. Saller joined the Nazi party, though he disagreed with their racial doctrine, which classified races as fixed and rigid. This disagreement became more problematic, and in 1933, Dr. Saller was banned from speaking publically. In early 1935, his license to teach was revoked by Reich Minister Rust of the Ministry of Science, Education, and National Culture in accordance with updated regulations. Accordingly, he left his teaching positions, but not before making it clear in a farewell address that he would not deviate from his beliefs regarding the dynamic nature of racial groups. Many fellow anthropologists, including Dr. Eugen Fischer, with whom he had collaborated previously to develop the Fischer-Saller scale for hair color, supported Nazi racial doctrines and benefitted from their continued roles within the party and in large national institutions. Dr. Saller entered private practice, and established the Badenweiler sanatorium with his wife, Herta Saller (1909-1999). Dr. Saller acted as physician there from 1936-1939. He served in the German army as a doctor during World War II (1939-1945). Dr. Saller then became medical director of the Robert Bosch Hospital in Stuttgart from 1945-1948, when he then returned to teaching anthropology and genetics at the University of Munich. The following year, he became director of the University’s Institute of Anthropology and Human Genetics.

The hair color tool was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1990 by the Institut für Humangenetik der Universität Göttingen.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Institut für Humangenetik der Universität Göttingen