Introduction

Abstract

The attempt to improve the quality of the hereditary pool of a particular group of people was long connected directly with National Socialism. “Eugenics” and “race hygiene,” aiming for the genetic “improvement” of the race, inevitably aroused thoughts about the Germany of 1933 to 1945. After all, National Socialists relied on these ideas of mass sterilization of the mentally and psychologically handicapped as a means of legitimating the ban on marriage between the handicapped and the non-handicapped and to justify the mass murder of the handicapped and the sick.¹ This led to the situation after the Second World War where the image of race hygiene and eugenics was frequently reduced to the inhumane reactionary and pseudoscientific practices of National Socialism.²