The word Anlage, deployed by Gregor Mandel in 1865 for hereditary factors, was already well established as a term of art among asylum doctors and other physicians. In relation to humans, the word could refer to a talent or trait, though in medical writings it seems always to be about potentiality, something in the constitution that might, or must, develop into some character, most often a defect of the constitution. In 1844, in the first issue of a new journal for German asylum directors, Ernst Albert von Zeller, head of the asylum of Winnenthal in Wurttemberg, placed erbiche Anlage as lead entry in a table of remote and proximate causes of mental disturbance.
by Theodore M. Porter
in Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850-1930
MIT Press 2016
In 1954 the West German Government enacted legislation designed to make possible reparations to those who suffered during the Holocaust. To qualify for those payments, however, survivors had to undergo extensive medical and psychiatric evaluations, usually by German-born physicians. The burden of proof rested on the survivors, who had to establish a causal connection between their present symptoms and previous persecutions at the hands of the Nazis. The West German indemnification office (Entschadigungsamter) often denied applicants' claims because of a neatly imposed self-absolution created by the German medical community: the symptoms of survivors were attributed to a faulty Anlage (constitution). These doctors proclaimed that survivors would not have developed problems had it not been for their infantile neuroses, which made them excessively vulnerable to stress. William Niederland objected vehemently:
The etiology of these conditions has all too frequently been attributed to the "Anlage," the constitution, to other events, indigenous factors...to something which went on between the survivors and their parents during the first and second year of life. It seems hard to believe that the four or five years in Auschwitz, with total or almost total family loss, the complete degradation to the point of dehumanization , the chronic starvation and deprivation of everything human, are considered incidental factors, so to speak, in fully stated medical opinions for the courts.
by Aaron Hass
in The Aftermath
Living With The Holocaust
Cambridge University Press 1995
jerome zonder
by Theodore M. Porter
in Heredity Explored: Between Public Domain and Experimental Science, 1850-1930
MIT Press 2016
In 1954 the West German Government enacted legislation designed to make possible reparations to those who suffered during the Holocaust. To qualify for those payments, however, survivors had to undergo extensive medical and psychiatric evaluations, usually by German-born physicians. The burden of proof rested on the survivors, who had to establish a causal connection between their present symptoms and previous persecutions at the hands of the Nazis. The West German indemnification office (Entschadigungsamter) often denied applicants' claims because of a neatly imposed self-absolution created by the German medical community: the symptoms of survivors were attributed to a faulty Anlage (constitution). These doctors proclaimed that survivors would not have developed problems had it not been for their infantile neuroses, which made them excessively vulnerable to stress. William Niederland objected vehemently:
The etiology of these conditions has all too frequently been attributed to the "Anlage," the constitution, to other events, indigenous factors...to something which went on between the survivors and their parents during the first and second year of life. It seems hard to believe that the four or five years in Auschwitz, with total or almost total family loss, the complete degradation to the point of dehumanization , the chronic starvation and deprivation of everything human, are considered incidental factors, so to speak, in fully stated medical opinions for the courts.
by Aaron Hass
in The Aftermath
Living With The Holocaust
Cambridge University Press 1995
jerome zonder
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