Hans Friedrich Karl Günther (born February 16 1891 in Freiburg; died September 25 1968 also in Freiburg) was a German race researcher and eugenicist in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. He was also known as Race Günther (Rassengünther) or Race Pope (Rassenpapst). He is considered to be a major influence on National Socialist racialist thought. He taught at the universities of Jena, Berlin and Freiburg, writing numerous books and essays on racial theory. Günther's Short Ethnology of the German People (1929) was a popular exposition of Nordicism. In 1931 he was appointed to a new chair of racial theory at Jena. He joined the Nazi party in the following year.

Günther divided the European population into six races, the Nordic, Phalic, Eastern, Western, Dinaric and East Baltic. "Western" and "Eastern" were, in practice, alternatives for the more widely used terms "Mediterranean" and "Alpine". The "Phalic" race was a minor category dropped in many of his writings.

Of these races, the Nordic was the noblest and was the great creative force in history. Günther managed to find "evidence" that blond Nordics were the founders of influential cultures almost everywhere. Opposed to the Nordics were the Jews, who were "a thing of ferment and disturbance, a wedge driven by Asia into the European structure." Günther argued that the Nordic peoples should unite to secure their dominance.

After the end of World War II, he did not revise his thinking, denying the Holocaust until his death.

See also

• Nordic theory
• Aryan race

External Links

• The Works Of HFK Günther in German and English

1891 births | 1968 deaths | Natives of Freiburg (Baden-Württemberg) | German eugenicists | Nazi propagandists | Anti-Semitic people | Nazi physicians

Hans Friedrich Karl Günther | Hans Friedrich Karl Günther