(in)human - english summary of the exhibition texts

(In)HumanEnglish Summary of the exhibition texts

Introtext

A lot of things happened in Sweden during the 20th century. New inventions appeared, such as the car, radio and the aeroplane. People talked a lot about the new, modern society. The new, modern age also brought democracy. For example, as from 1921 all Swedes were able to vote in elections. But which people should be allowed to be a part of the new, modern age? Some scientists began examining people and pondering our characteristics and which characteristics were hereditary. They began asking themselves which people were superior and which people were inferior.

This didn’t happen very long ago.How do we think nowadays?How do we grade each other nowadays?

What was phrenology?

Phrenology was another of the sciences which appeared in the 19th century. The phreno-logists believed that a person’s diff erent char-acteristics were seated in diff erent parts of the brain. For example, they believed the sense of direction to be located in a node in the neck. They also believed that the shape of the head revealed the personality of the individual. Today we know that the brain doesn’t work that way.

A cooperation between The Living History Forum, The Museum of Ethnography and Swedish Travelling Exhibitions.

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Ideas become science(page 2-6)

Grading people

During the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, a number of scientists began divid-ing people into diff erent races. They called their science racial biology (or eugenics) and said that some races were worth more or less than others. At that time many scientists also thought that poor people were inferior as a race to people with more money.

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Charles Darwin, Arthur de Gobineau and Herbert Spencer

These three books interested the racial biolo-gists:

Charles Darwin’s book The Origin of

Species appeared in 1859 Darwin gave people to understand that mankind develops and changes with the passing of time.

Arthur de Gobineau’s book The Inequality

of the Human Races was published in 1855.That book has been called the bible of modern racism.

Herbert Spencer’s book Principles of

Biology appeared in 1864. Herbert Spencer minted the expression: the survival of the fi ttest.

Many believed in the spirit of the nation

The spirit of the nation was much talked about at the beginning of the 19th century. The belief was that people from the same country belonged together and had the same way of thinking, had the same national spirit.

But then it was also believed that the poorest people were not a part of this spirit of the nation

The Swedish Racial Hygiene Society

The Swedish Racial Hygiene Society was formed in 1909. Scientists and politicians were numbered among its members and a lot of people listened to what they had to say. They wrote books on racial biology and they wanted Sweden to have an institute of racial biology.

The Swedish Racial Hygiene Society organiseda big exhibition in 1919. The exhibition showed diff erent ethnic types and was tremendously popular.

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The menace of democracy

What made people so interested in racial biology at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th?

It may be that when democracy began to grow strong in Europe, the people in power were fraid of everyone now being able to play a part in deciding things.

Racial biology therefore tried to prove that some people were superior to others.

Invective that wounds

When we want to hurt another person’s feel-ings, we use words like “idiot”, “mongoloid” and spastic”. When we use those words we are thinking along the same lines as the racial biologists.

Anders and Gustaf Retzius

Anders Retzius lived during the 19th centuryand was a professor of anatomy. He divided the Swedes into long-headed and short-headed people. Short-headed people had wider and rounder heads than long-headed people. An-ders Retzius thought that long-headed people were wiser and braver than short-headed people.

Gustaf Retzius was Anders Retzius’s son.In 1902 he published a book called ”Swedish Anthropology”. He had measured the heads of 45,000 Swedish soldiers. Gustaf Retzius thought that his book proved there were diff er-ences between people in diff erent parts of the country

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The terms racial biology, racial hygiene and eugenics

The racial biologists believed that people could inherit qualities from their parents, and they called those qualities “disposition” or “genotypes”. A person could inherit what were regarded as good or bad genotypes.

The ideas of racial hygiene come from racial biology. Racial hygiene said that humanity could be improved by people with good geno-types having a lot of children and people with what were considered bad genotypes having no children.

Today we know that it is not so easy to tellwhich genotypes are good and which are bad.

Eugenics is another word for racial hygiene.A distinction is made between positive eugenics and negative eugenics.

Positive eugenics meant encouraging people with “good” genotypes to have many children.

Negative eugenics meant preventing people with “bad” genotypes from having any children at all.

This is what actually happened. Doctors sterilised many people against their wishes, Performing operations on them which made it impossible for them to have children.

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What is modern society?

By modern society we mean the great deveop-ments which have taken place in the affl uent countries of the world since the 18th century. Development has given us better technology and more of it. We are living longer and enjoy-ing better health.

Democracy is also a part of modern society.Everyone must have the same rights and rank equally.

Not everyone fi nds room in modern society

A lot of things have improved in our modern society. But there are also things which are less good.

In Sweden, all children were made to attend school from the 1840s. But then it was also discovered that not all children could learn to read and write. Some people then began to be called “feeble-minded”. And “mental retarda-tion”, as it was then called, was confused with the fact of some children having only reading and writing disabilities.

We believe more and more in science

With the advent of modern society, people began believing more and more in science. Scientists learned to cure diseases and the doctor became almost godlike. The politicians listened to scientists. This too had the eff ect of changing society.

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The Institute of Racial Biology

In 1922 the Swedish Riksdag (parliament) passed a law setting up the National Institute of Racial Biology, the fi rst national institute of its kind in the world. Herman Lundborg, who became the Institute’s fi rst Director, was Swe-den’s best-known racial biologist.

Fear of degeneration

Degeneration means retrograde development – things moving backwards and getting worse.Herman Lundborg, head of the National Insti-tute of Racial Biology, said that societywould degenerate – deteriorate – if “inferior” persons were allowed to multiply.

Herman Lundborg tried, for example, to provethat the Sami were dying out as a result of de-generation. But he never found any evidence.

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Racial biology started in the troubled 19th century

With society changing so greatly in the 19th cen-tury, people no longer knew what to believe in. Perhaps the answers were to be found in the exciting new science of biology? Perhaps Nature could tell us how our society should be built up and which people would have power in it?

Francis Galton

The British scientist Francis Galton began using the word “eugenics” in the late 19th century.

Francis Galton thought that everyone should be awarded marks to see whether they were suited for having children together.

Herbert Spencer

The British philosopher Herbert Spencer coined the well-known phrase the survival of the fi ttest in his book Principles of Biology, published in 1864.

Herbert Spencer was interested in Charles Darwin’s thoughts concerning the struggle between the species in nature, and felt that what applied in nature should also apply to society.

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Nils von Hofsten was a well-known racial biologist

Professor Nils von Hofsten lived between 1881 and 1967 and was one of Sweden’s most emi-nent racial biologists. He took the view that people considered feeble-minded should be sterilised to prevent them having children.

For 28 years Nils von Hofsten was involved in ordering people to be sterilised against their own wishes.

A network for racial hygiene

Nils von Hofsten belonged to a network which wanted Sweden to cultivate racial hygiene. The network included scientists and politicians with a big say in the Riksdag and at the univer-sities.

Nils von Hofsten wanted more people to be sterilised

Nils von Hofsten wrote a book calling for Swe-den to pass a new law on the sterilisation of people regarded as feeble-minded. He thought doctors were sterilising too few people and he wanted local authorities and doctors to ap-ply for permission to sterilise still more peopl considered feeble-minded.

Nils von Hofsten often fi gured in the media

Nils von Hofsten liked being in the papers and on the radio, talking about scientifi c issues. He was called an expert and was able to speak about the scientifi c view of the issue of sterilis-ing people who at that time were considered feeble-minded.

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Where did the Sami come from?

During the 17th and 18th centuries scientists began taking an interesting in the Sami and wondering where they had come from.

In the mid-19th century the Sami were be-lieved to be descended from a hunting people who had previously existed all over Europe.

The Sami on parade

18th and 19th century Europeans grew inter-ested in seeing real Sami people and reindeer. There were Sami who travelled round show-ing themselves to European royal families and paying audiences. When Skansen in Stockholm opened in the 1890s, there was always a Sami family with reindeer living there to begin with.

The Sami and racial biology

At the end of the 19th century several scien-tists began saying that the Sami were not an original population. In other words, they were not an ethnic group who had been living in one place for a very long time.

One of these scientists, Gustaf von Düben, said that the Sami had migrated to Sweden from the east. That led a number of scientiststo consider the Sami inferior to the Swedes.

The Institute of Racial Biology and the Sami

Herman Lundborg, the head of the Institute of Racial Biology, was greatly interested in the Sami. He believed they were an inferior raceapproaching extinction, but he never found any proof of this.

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Vipeholm was the largest institution

Vipeholm, in Lund, was Sweden’s biggest insti-tution for the “feeble-minded”. It fi rst opened in 1935. As many as a thousand people lived there.

Vipeholm experimented with human beings

Vipeholm is remembered today for the scien-tifi c experiments which its doctors performed on the people living there.

In 1946 doctors and dentists began investigat-ing whether eating a lot of sugar gave people dental caries. The Vipeholm patients were given lots of sweets, including a sticky kind of toff ee. When they got holes in their teeth,the teeth were extracted by dentists.

But Vipeholm was not the only place where doctors experimented with human beings. This is something which happened and is still happening in many parts of the world.

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The Sami call a halt

In the opening years of he 20th century many Sami began to protest at being badly treated. They were not allowed to live as they wanted to and they were not allowed to speak their language. Sami was prohibited in schools.

Not until 1977 did the Riksdag declare the Sami an original population. The Sami then acquired several rights, e.g. land rights and a parliament of their own, the Sameting.


From theory to practice(page 12-17)

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Many countries had sterilisation laws

The racial biologists wanted legislation which could force people to be sterilised. They wanted to prevent certain people from having children. At that time many countries had laws like this, e.g. Sweden, the USA, Denmark and Germany.

So many were sterilised

In Sweden we had sterilisation laws between 1934 and 1975. During this period 63,000 were sterilised, about half of them forcibly.

It was mostly women who were forcibly steri-lised. Only 3 per cent were men, and yet men are much easier to sterilise.


Women were affected most

97 per cent of the people sterilised in Sweden were women. Half of them were willing. Most of them were poor women who had had more children than they could look after. Contracep-tives were prohibited, and many people saw sterilisation as a way of helping these women.

But many women agreed to sterilisation because it was the only way of getting out of institutions. And they were not told what the operation was for.

The other half of the women, 30,000, were sterilised against their own wishes.

Sterilisations grow fewer from the 50s onwards

In 1943 a number of MPs wanted to make the law on sterilisation even stricter. They also wanted schools to get better at identifying pupils considered feeble-minded.

But nothing came of this and the number of sterilisations began to decline in the mid-50s.Instead society now began to feel that sterili-sation was a bad method.

Crisis in the Institute of Racial Biology

The Institute of Racial Biology in Sweden was quite small and never worked very well. It was a part of Uppsala University and its Director, Herman Lundborg, did not get on well with the University’s other research scientists.

Herman Lundborg retired in 1935 and was succeeded by Gunnar Dahlberg, who was against racism.

Gösta himself began working in a soap factory and got better and better jobs there. He ended up as a salesman, earning good money. He had now made a “class journey” from working class to middle class.

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The 1929 Bill

The fi rst Bill for sterilising the “feeble-mind-ed” was introduced in 1929.

The 1934 Act

Sweden’s fi rst Sterilisation Act was passed in 1934. People could now be sterilised by eugenic or social reasons. “Eugenic reasons” meant stopping “genetic inferiority”. “Social reasons” meant, for example, a woman being unable to look after her children.

The 1941 Act

A new Sterilisation Act, the strictest of them all, was passed in 1941 and made it far easier to steri-lise the “feeble-minded” without their consent.

Sweden changes a lot in a short time

During the 20th century Sweden was trans-formed within a short time from a poor agrar-ian country to a modern industrial nation.

Gösta Arnstad worked selling soap. In 1936 he bought a newly built house in Stuvsta. But his father had been a poor man working as a farmhand.

The crisis of the 1930s

A worldwide crisis broke in the 1930s. The economy went into steep decline and many people were put out of work. Sweden too was hit by the crisis though not so hard as many other countries.

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Many died of TB

TB, tuberculosis, was once widespread in Swe-den. Ten thousand Swedes every year died of it in the 1930s. And so it was important to keep everywhere clean and guard against infection.

Health care for children and mothers

In the 1930s the Swedish Government spent a lot of money on health care. Women expecting babies, for example, now received far better care than before.

Improved care resulted in fewer and fewer infant deaths. In 1937 the Riksdag also decided that all children were to have special health care.

Hygiene improves

In 1938 Ludvig “Lubbe” Nordström broadcast on the radio a roving report from what he called “fi lthy Sweden”. He found draughty, damp houses with too many people living in them.

Many people were upset by these radio broad-casts, and a great deal of discussion followed. After this the State began building better homes.

A better life for many in the 1930s

The gap between rich and poor grew narrower in the 1930s. Sweden built more and more factories and the people working there were better paid. But people working on the land became worse off . Sweden was now becoming an industrial nation.

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People became frightened of the feeble-minded

When Sweden introduced universal schooling in the 19th century it was discovered that some children were unable to learn reading and writing. A discussion now began concerningthose considered feeble-minded.

At fi rst the “feeble-minded” were treated well, e.g. by being given schools of their own.But when more and more people began think-ing like the racial biologists, more and more came to see the “feeble-minded” as a danger to society. Many people grew afraid of the “feeble-minded and their genetic makeup.

Society takes responsibility for the feeble-minded

At the end of the 19th century Christian organisations began taking care of people considered feeble-minded and providing them with nursing homes. The fi rst home was opened in Göteborg in 1866. Later it was felt that the state should do more to help.

Society must be protected from the feeble-minded

At the end of the 19th century it seemed at fi rst as if people considered feeble-minded would be allowed a part in modern society. But this is not what happened, because the racial biolo-gists felt that people considered feeble-minded were genetically inferior and society must be protected from them.

Institutions for the feeble-minded

Many institutions for the “feeble-minded” were opened in the fi rst half of the 20th century. But these were not very nice places to live in. Many of them were like prisons.

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From idiot to citizen - Introduction

In the 1950s many people became concerned about the way in which those previously called “feeble-minded” were being treated, and so what is now the Swedish National Association for Persons with Intellectual Disability, FUB, was started in 1956. FUB is now campaigning to bring civil rights to people with intellectual disability.

The newspaper Arbetaren reporting on the “feeble-minded”

In the summer of 1953 the newspaper Arbetaren reported on how badly people at the Vipeholm institution for the “feeble-minded” were being treated. Children were treated worst of all, both by the adult patients and by the warders. A public outcry followed, and the treatment of these people in institutions became a topic of discussion.

From idiot to citizen

In 1961 Karl Grunewald was appointed Senior Inspector of the care of people with intellec-tual disability in Sweden. He found that they were very badly cared for and he campaigned to improve conditions for people with intel-lectual disability and to let them live together with other members of our society.

Karl Grunewald wrote a book entitled “From idiot to citizen”.

Where are the “feeble-minded” going to?

Karl Grunewald discovered that the people formerly considered “feeble-minded” were getting fewer and fewer in number. Karl Grunewald was certain that this was due to people in Sweden no longer being so poor. He believed that many people were made “feeble-minded” by hunger and disease.

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The family in Glömminge

Gertrud Johansson was born into a poor family in 1922. Her parents were share-croppers and the family lived in Glömminge on the island of Öland.

In 1938 Gertrud Johansson’s mother died of cancer. There were now 10 children in the family and several of them were sent off to diff erent institutions. Three of them – Agne, Maj-Britt and Arne – were forcibly sterilised.

Agne

The year after his mother died, Agne had to leave school. He was then in the fourth year. Instead he began working for a farmer. But there was trouble at the farm and Agne was sent to a correctional institution. He stayed there for some years and it was decided to sterilise him. Agne was against this, but he was sterilised all the same, in 1942.

Maj-Britt

When Maj-Britt was 8 they sent her to the Nannylund institution for the “feeble-mind-ed”. At fi rst the teacher describes her as being a little behind in school, but she starts feeling worse and worse. She gets aggressive and disruptive and is sent to mental hospital in Västervik. When she is 16 she is sterilised. Maj-Britt spends the rest of her life in mental hospital.

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Arne

When Arne was 10 they sent her to the Nannylund institution for the “feeble-minded”. He was quiet and docile, which is perhaps what made him seem “feeble-minded”.

Arne was sterilised at 17, and then he was sent home. He worked for many years in a factory and was also a good swimmer. But all his life he lived alone.

Gertrud

Gertrud was the fi rst child to leave home. She travelled to Stockholm and got a job “in service”. She eventually married and had a son, Kjell.

All her life Gertrud tried to help the other children, who were in various institu-tions all over Sweden. She wrote letters to the authorities and campaigned for her brothers and sister. Her son, Kjell Sundstedt, has written about his mother and her campaign in a book entitled “For Gertrud”.

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The Fredriksson family

The Fredriksson family helped to found the Swedish National Association for Persons with Intellectual Disability, FUB. They themselves had a child with an intellectual disability.There was another family on the same stair-case who also had a child with an intellectual disability, and the two families became best friends. Only then did they dare to talk about the children and their diffi culties.

The Swedish National Association for Persons with Intellectual Disability, FUB

In 1952 a number of Stockholm parents formed an association for children with intellectual disability and their parents. A few years later, in 1956, FUB became a national organisation with branches all over Sweden. Its members worked hard to secure improve-ments for people with intellectual disability. And in time they succeeded.


Many Romas were sterilised

Sweden’s harshest sterilisation law was passed in 1941. It then became more usual to sterilise people because they were poor and led lives which modern society found undesirable.

Roma people and Travellers, otherwise often referred to in those days as gypsies and diddi-coys, were prime targets. We do not know how many Roma people and Travellers were forc-ibly sterilised, but researchers put the number at about 500.

The story of Ingrid Post

Ingrid Post was born in 1937 and was a Travel-ler. As a child she roamed the length and readth of Sweden. When she was 20 she met Andreas, a sailor, and they had two children together. But when she was expecting their third child the doctors forced her to have an abortion and be sterilised. Otherwise, they said, the authorities would take her two children away from her.

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Making a better future

At this time all political parties in Sweden were agreed that Sweden must have sterilisation laws.

They said that society must be built on scien-tifi c foundations. The scientists became the new experts and had the ear of the politicians. Poverty was now to be abolished, and some-times this meant abolishing the poorest people as well.

Alfred Petrén – the fi rst to propose sterilisation

Dr Alfred Petrén represented the Social Democrats in the Riksdag at the beginning of the 20th century. He was the fi rst to propose sterilisation. In 1922 he drafted the fi rst Bill on the subject.

Alfred Petrén was also Senior Inspector of the care of the “feeble-minded”, and he saw to it that big institutions were built for them.

Elis Essen-Möller – the fi rst sterilisation doctor?

Elis Essen-Möller was a doctor and a Profes-sor at Lund University. In 1922 he wrote that it was necessary for the “feeble-minded” to be sterilised. He also wrote that he had sterilised several people already, despite there being no law on the subject.

Elis Essen-Möller became an expert adviser to the working party drafting Sweden’s fi rst sterilisation law.

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JO criticises sterilisation

In 1944 the Swedish Ombudsman of Justice, JO, had an unusual case put before him. Lars Svensson was one of the people who were con-sidered “feeble-minded”. The hospital where he was living insisted that he be sterilised, otherwise he would not be discharged.

Lars Svensson’s family protested to JO and wanted to know whether forcing someone to be sterilised was legal. JO found that it was not legal, but nothing happened. Nobody took any notice of what JO said, and Lars Svensson was sterilised.

“Entitlement of the feeble-minded to have children”

It was not until 1960 that politicians began thinking along new lines. Two young MPs, Olof Palme and Elisabet Sjövall, introduced a Bill to amend the Sterilisation Act. Elisabet Sjövall said that people considered “feeble-minded” should be entitled to have children. But many more years were to pass before the law was changed.

The UN says there is only one race

In 1950 the United Nations, UN, declared that all human beings belonged to the same race,the race called Homo Sapiens.

Many leading scientists also said that human beings were all of the same race. It was wrong – a fabrication – to suppose that we humans belonged to diff erent races with diff erent char-acteristics. This meant that racial biology was no longer a science.

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What happened in other countries(page 24 - 28)

Germany - IngressWhen the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 they passed laws on compulsory sterilisa-tion. The hunt was now on for people who were considered “feeble-minded” and people con-sidered genetically inferior – “degenerate”.

Killing people with intellectual disability

In 1939 the Nazis began murdering children with intellectual disability. They went on to murder all adults with intellectual disability and patients in mental hospitals. They called this operation T4.

The Nazis built gas chambers which looked like showers. The patients thought they were going for a shower, but instead they were gassed to death.

By the end of the Second World War, nearly 300,000 people had been murdered because they had an intellectual disability or were mentally ill.

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Contact with Sweden’s Institute of Racial Biology

Several of the German experts murdering people with intellectual disability in Germany were in touch with the Swedish Institute of Racial Biology.

One of them, Hans FK Günther, was a frequent visitor to the Institute. He was never brought to justice for his crimes.

Racial hygiene in the USA

Racial hygiene became an object of interest in the USA at an early stage of things. At the end of the 19th century there were laws to present blacks and whites having children together.

The fi rst law on compulsory sterilisation of “imbeciles” was passed in 1907.

Charles Davenport

Charles Davenport was a well-known racial biologist in the USA. In 1904 he founded the Biological Experiment Station at Cold Spring Harbor, outside New York, in 1904. He also started a Eugenics Record Offi ce for preserving data on the way in which undesirable qualities were communicated between humans.

Harry Laughlin

Harry Laughlin worked for Charles Davenport and made Congress believe that immigrants from the south of Europe showed “excessive insanity” compared to people from the north of Europe.

This led to new and stricter legislation on im-migration. Harry Laughlin also campaigned very hard to make all states introduce legisla-tion for the sterilisation of “imbeciles”.

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How it ended

At least 65,000 people in the USA were forcibly sterilised. Most of the sterilisations took place in California and many of the people sterilised were black women. The number of sterilisa-tions declined in the 1950s, but the legislation stayed on the law books for many years.

Henry Goddard’s book “The Kallikak Family”

In 1912 Henry Goddard, a psychologist, wrote a book entitled “The Kallikak Family”. In it he tried to show that “feeble-minded” genes tended to oust intelligent ones.

Henry Goddard was out to prove that human-ity would deteriorate if people looked on as “feeble-minded” were allowed to reproduce. Many such books were written at this time and they achieved great popularity.

“The Black Stork”

The paediatrician Harry Haiselden allowed a child to die instead of undergoing surgery.Many people approved of this, and Harry Haiselden actually became a fi lm star in the fi lm “The Black Stork”, made in 1916.

Carrie Buck

Carrie Buck was a poor girl from Virginia.Her mother was locked up in an institution for the “feeble-minded”, and when Carrie became pregnant she was locked up there as well.

The doctors wanted to sterilise Carrie, but Carrie’s lawyer said that Carrie could not be termed “feeble-minded” because she had done well in school.

The racial biologist Harry Laughlin took the case to the Supreme Court and Carrie lost. She was sentenced to compulsory sterilisation in 1927. After this it became easier to sterilise “fee-ble-minded” people against their own wishes.

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Italy was critical of sterilisations

In Italy too, people were interested in racial hygiene (eugenics), but here the winning side was the one opposed to sterilisation and eu-thanasia, due partly to the Catholic Church’s disapproval of abortion and sterilisation. The Church in Italy was very powerful.

Italian fascism and racial hygieneBenito Mussolini introduced Fascism in Italy.Although Fascism was very similar to Nazism, Benito Mussolini considered it important for families to have many children. Consequently the Italian racial biologists were not keen on sterilising people.

Britain was the cradle of racial hygiene

It was in Britain that the fi rst ideas of racial hygiene originated.But Britain never passed any laws for sterilis-ing the “feeble-minded”.This was partly because many people criticised racial hygiene and called it a war on the poor-est members of society.But some of the people regarded at the time as “feeble-minded” were sterilised in institu-tions all the same, even though it was not really allowed.

England was the venue for the fi rst Interna-tional Eugenics Conference, which took place in London in 1912.

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(in)human - english summary of the exhibition texts

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