This dissertation examines the origins and course of development of the science of seroanthropology from its origins in World War I until the end of the Third Reich. Seroanthropology was a blend of two sciences—serology and anthropology—and sought to identify race through blood. It was perhaps most well-received by Germany’s völkisch race scientists, or those who believed in the superiority of the Aryan race to all others. During Weimar and Nazi Germany, race theorists emphasized physiognomic characteristics in racial classification. As examiners’ preferences varied, determining race was often a very subjective process. In the hope that blood would be a more efficient indicator of race than appearance, extensive efforts were made to realize a relationship between blood type and race. Some researchers came to affiliate blood type with race and a range of other characteristics. These tendencies were most conspicuous among researchers with a far-right political agenda, and I explore the ways in which their personal motivations were influenced by their professional activities. The scientific notion of “blood difference” was further exploited by race propagandists.
Seroanthropology was attractive to a select group of far-right physicians who misappropriated blood science and medical fact for racist purposes, but there were also non-völkisch physicians of Jewish descent who made significant contributions to the study of blood and race. I examine the reasons for their involvement in a science that was misappropriated by anti-Semites. Jewish involvement in studies of race is more nuanced than has been claimed. This dissertation offers a revision of the recent biopolitics theory within modern German historiography which emphasizes the continuities between modern science and National Socialist racial policy. I question the notion that German studies of race and eugenics showed modernity’s “most fatal potential.” My analysis demonstrate how seroanthropology does not fit neatly into this more recent paradigm and thereby urges us to rethink the role of science in modernization. There was no “line of continuity” between Weimar and National Socialist seroanthropology.