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Nordic theory (or Nordicism) was a theory of racial supremacy prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which claimed that North European peoples constitute a “master race” because of their supposed innate racial capacity for leadership. Nordic theory was influential in Western Europe and the United States during the early twentieth century and was a major influence on Nazi ideology.

The theory drew on the dominant anthropological model of racial categories prevalent in the early twentieth century, according to which Europeans were divided into three sub-categories of the Caucasian race: the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean races. The Nordic race was thought to be prevalent in northern Europe, especially, but not exclusively, among speakers of the Germanic languages, and was characterized by tall stature, long head- and facial form, straight and fine blond, red, or light brown hair, and blue, grey or green eyes. The Alpine race was thought to predominate in central Europe, and was said to be characterized by short stature and comparatively round head. The Mediterranean race was thought to be prevalent in southern Europe and, sometimes, parts of North Africa, and was said to be characterised by dark hair, dark eyes, swarthy complexion, moderate-to-short stature, and long shape of skull.

Attitudes in ancient Europe

Some ancient writers commented on the differences between Northern and Southern Europeans, generally taking the view that northerners were barbarians. Aristotle noted differences between Greeks and the people of the north, believing that Greek superiority was visible in their medium skin tone, as opposed to pale northerners and dark Africans. The Roman historian Tacitus, however, greatly admired the Germanic tribes, saying that their fair skin and blonde hair were marks of beauty, and that their cultures had retained racial purity, unlike the multicultural Romans. Tacitus had great respect for Germanic people, seeing them as honorable warriors. Many Romans agreed with Tacitus' belief that fair features were beautiful. Roman women paid handsomely for blonde and red wigs made out of the hair of captured Germans and Celts.

Origins of Nordicism

From the Seventeenth century on, as Northern European countries became more powerful, Northern peoples began to argue for their own superiority. Benjamin Franklin proposed a clear distinction between "white" Europeans and "swarthy" Europeans, stating that immigration to the newly-born United States should favor the "white" Northern Germans and Englishmen rather than the "swarthy" Southern Germans, French, and Italians. Franklin believed the "white" Europeans to be of a higher degree of culture than that of "swarthy" Europeans.

These ideas were of relatively minor importance until the emergence of Aryanism in the mid-ninteenth century. This theory held that speakers of the Indo-European languages ("Aryans") are an innately superior branch of humanity, responsible for most of its greatest achievements. Its principal proponent was Arthur de Gobineau in his Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855). Though Gobineau did not equate Nordic peoples with Aryans, he did argue that Germanic people were the best modern representatives of the Aryan race. Adapting the comments of Tacitus and other Roman writers, he argued that the "pure" Northeners had regenerated Europe after the Roman empire had declined due to the racial "dilution" of its leadership.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer also possessed a distinctly hierarchical racial concept of history, attributing civilizational primacy to the "white races" who gained their sensitivity and intelligence by refinement in the rigorous North:

The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilization. (Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume II, Section 92)

By the 1880s a number of linguists and anthropologists were arguing that the Aryans themselves had originated somewhere in northern Europe. It was proposed by Theodor Poesche that the Aryans originated in the north, but it was Karl Penka who popularized the idea that the Aryans had emerged in Scandinavia, and could be identified by the distinctive Nordic characteristics of blond hair and blue eyes. The distinguished biologist Thomas Henry Huxley agreed with him, coining the term "Xanthochroi" to refer to fair-skinned Europeans (as opposed to darker Mediterranean peoples, who Huxley called "Melanochroi"). This distinction was repeated by Charles Morris in his book The Aryan Race (1888), which argued that the original Aryans could be identified by their blond hair and other Nordic features, such as dolichocephaly (high brows). The argument was given extra impetus by the French anthropologist Vacher de Lapouge in his book L’Aryen, in which he argued that the "dolichocephalic-blond" peoples were natural leaders, destined to rule over more brachiocephalic (low-browed) peoples. The philosopher Frederich Nietzsche also referred in his writings to "blond beasts": amoral adventurers who were supposed to be the progenitors of creative cultures. In On the Genealogy of Morals, he wrote, "In Latin malus ... could indicate the vulgar man as the dark one, especially as the black-haired one, as the pre-Aryan dweller of the Italian soil which distinguished itself most clearly through his colour from the blonds who became their masters, namely the Aryan conquering race."

By the early 20th century this theory was so well established that sociologists were using the concept of a "blond race" to model the migrations of the supposedly more entrepreneurial and innovative components of European populations. As late as 1939 Carleton Coon wrote that "The Poles who came to the United States during the nineteenth century, and the early decades of the twentieth, did not represent a cross-section of the Polish population, but a taller, blonder, longer-headed group than the Poles as a whole." The "high brow"/"low brow" distinction also became enshrined in language.

The concept of a Nordic race

The term "Nordic" itself was initially proposed as a racial group by the French anthropologist Joseph Deniker. Deniker's use of Nordique was meant to simply translate as "Northern", and his idea of what it stood for was more akin to an "ethnic group" (another term which he coined) than a biogical "race". It was the work of sociologist/economist William Z. Ripley which popularized the idea of three biological European races, and he borrowed Deniker's terminology (he had previously used the term "Teuton") in his 1899 canonical work, The Races of Europe, where he divided the races of Europe up by a variety of anthropometric measurements, but focusing especially on their cephalic index and stature. By the early years of the twentieth century Ripley's tripartite Nordic/Alpine/Mediterranean model was well established. However the glorification of the Nordics was not without its critics. The fact that Mediterranean peoples had been responsible for the greatest of ancient civilizations was an obvious problem for the theory. The anti-Nordicist writer Giuseppè Sergi argued in his influential book The Mediterranean Race (1901) that Mediterraneans constituted "the greatest race in the world", with a creative edge absent in the Nordic race. They were the creators of all the major ancient civilizations, from Mesopotamia to Rome. Nordicists responded with the speculative claim that Nordics had formed upper tiers of ancient civilizations, which had declined once this dominant race has been assimilated. Many Nordicists did argue that the Mediterranean race had many positive characteristics, some even admitting that the Mediterranean was superior to the Nordic in terms of artistic and intellectual ability. The Nordic race, however, was still regarded as superior on the basis that, although Mediterranean peoples were culturally sophisticated, it was the Nordic who was the innovator and conqueror, having an adventurous spirit that no other race could match. The Alpine race was usually regarded as inferior to both the Nordic and Mediterranean races, making up the traditional peasant class of Europe while Nordics occupied the aristocracy and led the world in technology, and Mediterraneans were more imaginative.

In the USA, the primary spokesman for "Nordicism" was the eugenicist Madison Grant, who used it as a justification for anti-immigration policies of the 1920s, arguing that the immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe represented a lesser type of European and their numbers in the United States should not be increased. Grant and others urged this as well as the complete restriction of non-Caucasians, such as the Chinese and Japanese. This led to the Immigration Act of 1924, which was designed to decrease the number of Eastern and Southern European immigrants, exclude Asian immigrants altogether, and favor immigration from Northern and Western European countries. Grant argued that the Nordic race had been responsible for most of humanity's great achievements, that "admixture" was "race suicide", and that unless various eugenic policies were enacted, the Nordic race would be supplanted by the inferior races. His 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History about Nordicism was highly influential among racial thinking, government policy making, and even on popular culture. F. Scott Fitzgerald invokes Grant's ideas through a character in part of The Great Gatsby, and Hilaire Belloc jokingly rhapsodied the "Nordic man" in a poem and essay in which he satirised the stereotypes of Nordics, Alpines and Mediterraneans.

Nordicism in the inter-war years

After the First World War the concept of a masterly Nordic race was well established. The British psychologist William McDougall, writing in 1920, could say with confidence that,

Among all the disputes and uncertainties of the ethnographers about the races of Europe, one fact stands out clearly — namely, that we can distinguish a race of northerly distribution and origin, characterized physically by fair color of hair and skin and eyes, by tall stature and dolichocephaly (i.e. long shape of head), and mentally by great independence of character, individual initiative, and tenacity of will. Many names have been used to denote this type, ... . It is also called the Nordic type.

Shortly after this the German eugenicists Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz published their work Human Heredity, which insisted on the innate superiority of the Nordic race. Adapting the arguments of Schopenhauer and others to Darwinian theory, they argued that the qualities of initiative and will-power identified by earlier writers had arisen from natural selection, because of the tough landscape in which Nordic peoples evolved. This had ensured that weaker individuals had not survived. This argument was derived from earlier eugenicist and Social Darwinist ideas. According to the authors, the Nordic race arose in the ice age, from,

quite a small group which, under stress of rapidly changing conditions (climate, beasts of the chase) was exposed to exceptionally rigorous selection and was persistently inbred, thus acquiring the peculiar characteristics which persist today as the exclusive heritage of the Nordic race....Philological, archaelogical and anthropological researches combine to indicate that the primal home of the Indo-Germanic Aryan languages must have been in Northern Europe.

They went on to argue that "the original Indo-Germanic civilization" was carried by Nordic migrants as far as India, and that the physiognomy of upper-caste Indians "disclose a Nordic origin".

By this time, Germany was well-accustomed to theories of race and racial superiority due to the long presence of the Völkish movement, the philosophy that Germans constituted a unique people, or volk, linked by common blood. While Völkism was popular mainly among Germany's lower classes and was more a romaticized version of ethnic nationalism, Nordicism attracted German anthropologists and eugenicists. The most influential German in this field was Hans F.K. Günther, whose Short Ethnology of the German People (1929) was very widely circulated. Günther identified five principal European races instead of three, and focused on their supposedly distinct mental attributes. Günther criticised the Völkish idea, stating that the Germans were not racially unified, but were actually one of the most racially diverse peoples in Europe. Despite this, many Völkists who merged Volkism and Nordicism embraced Günther's ideas, most notably the Nazis.

Nazi Nordicism

Human Heredity was read by Adolf Hitler shortly before he wrote Mein Kampf, and is referred to by him as scientific proof of the racial basis of civilization. Its arguments were also repeated by the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, in his book The Myth of the Twentieth Century (1930). Rosenberg argued that the Nordic race had evolved in a now-lost landmass off the coast of North Western Europe, and had migrated through Scandinavia and northern Europe, expanding further south, and as far as Iran and India where it founded the Aryan cultures of Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. Like Grant and others, he argued that the entrepreneurial energy of the Nordics had "degenerated" when they mixed with "inferior" peoples.

With the rise of Hitler, Nordic theory became the norm within German culture. In some cases the "Nordic" concept became an almost abstract ideal rather than a mere racial category. Hermann Gauch wrote in 1933 that the fact that "birds can be taught to talk better than other animals is explained by the fact that their mouths are Nordic in structure." He further claimed that in humans, "the shape of the Nordic gum allows a superior movement of the tongue, which is the reason why Nordic talking and singing are richer."

Such views were extreme, but more mainstream Nordic theory was institutionalized. Hans Günther, who joined the Nazi Party in 1932, was praised as a pioneer in racial thinking, a shining light of Nordic theory. Nearly all Nazi comments on the Nordic Race were based on Günther's works, and Alfred Rosenberg presented Günther with a medal for his work in anthropology. Madison Grant's book was the first non-German book to be translated and published by the Nazi Reich press, and Grant proudly displayed to his friends a letter from Hitler claiming that the book was "his Bible." The Nazi state used such ideas about the differences between European races as part of their program of Racial Hygiene and various discriminatory and coercive policies which culminated in the Holocaust. Ironically, in Grant's first edition of his popular book, he classified the Germans as being primarily Nordic, but in his second edition, published after the USA had entered WWI, he had re-classified the now enemy power as being dominated by "inferior" Alpines. Günther's work agreed with Grant's, and the German anthropologist frequently stated that the Germans are definitely not a fully Nordic people. Hitler himself was later to downplay the importance of Nordicism for this very reason. The standard tripartite model placed most of the population of Hitler's Germany in the Alpine category, especially after the Anschluss. By 1939 Hitler abandoned Nordicist rhetoric in favour of the idea that the German people as a whole were united by distinct "spiritual" qualities. Nevertheless, Nazi eugenics policies continued to favor Nordics over Alpines and other German racial groups.

Decline of Nordicism

Even before the rise of Nazism, Grant's concept of "race" lost favor in the USA in the polarizing political climate after the first World War, including the Great Migration and the Depression. The influx of African-Americans into the Northern states in this time resulted in a "flattening" of racial categories into what eugenicist Lothrop Stoddard named as "bi-racialism" — an absolutist black/white distinction maintained by declaring all mixed-race people to be considered "black". This required the abandonment of Grant's gradations of "white" in favour of the one drop theory — which was embraced by white supremacists and black nationalists alike. Among the latter were Marcus Garvey, and, in part, W.E.B. Du Bois, at least in his later thought.

After the second World War, the categorization of peoples into "superior" and "inferior" groups fell even further out of political and scientific favor. The tripartite subdivision of "Caucasians" into Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean groups persisted among some scientists into the 1960s, notably in Carleton Coon's book The Origin of Races (1962). Among some white supremacists Nordic theory is still maintained, as, for example in the writings of Roger Pearson and Richard McCulloch, who adopted the term Nordish race.

notes

  1. Huxley, T.H. "The Aryan Question", Huxley, T.H., "On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind"
  2. Lapouge, V (trans Clossen, C) Old and New Aspects of the Aryan Question, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 5, No. 3. (1899), pp. 329-346.
  3. Michael Kalish, Friedrich Nietzsche's Influence on Hitler's Mein Kampf
  4. Coon, C. The Races of Europe (1939), chapter 1, Theory and Principles of the Concept Race.
  5. Hilaire Belloc, "Talking (and singing) of the Nordic Man"
  6. The Group Mind, p.159, Arno Press, 1973 edition; Copyright, 1920 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.
  7. Baur, I., Fischer, E., Lenz, F., (trans Eden and Cedar Paul) Human Heredity, Allen and Unwin, 1931, p.191
  8. Snyder, Louis, Encyclopedia of the Third Reich, p.281

See also

References

External links

Nazi eugenics | Racism | Race (historical definitions) | Nordicismo

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Nordic theory".

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