Madison Grant

Madison Grant ( born November 19, 1865 in New York; † May 30, 1937 ) was an American lawyer and author breed theoretical works. He has been a Board of Directors in the American Museum of Natural History and co-founder of the Bronx Zoo.

Life

Grant was born the son of an old Anglo-American family of Scottish descent, in New York. His father Gabriel Grant was a well-known physician, who was honored during the civil war for his services. His mother was a descendant of Caroline Manice Jesse De Forest, who was among the first settlers in 1623. About the line of the Father Grant was related to Robert Treat Paine, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Grant studied at Yale University and Columbia Law School Law. He then worked as a lawyer; However, his main interest was in the sciences, where he soon turned to eugenics.

The anthropologist Alexander Gold Weiser held Grants major works The Passing of the Great Race ( 1916) and The Conquest of a Continent (1933 ) for examples of admirable dressed in a scientific garb racial prejudice.

The author Jonathan Spiro (2008) calls Grant the leaders of the eugenics movement in the United States. He propagated the view of the blond -haired blue-eyed and as the " master race " and demanded that the government destroy the descendants of " inferior races" ( eliminate ) to which have no " value " (value) for the Company. His works were very popular in the U.S. in the 1920s, as they adapted to a wave of conservative reaction to social changes and to an anti-immigrant sentiment. Especially Southern and Eastern European, Jewish and oastasiatische immigrants were no longer welcome and partially persecutions of the Ku Klux Klan exposed. Grant worked as a lobbyist for the dissemination of his views, which meant that the U.S. Congress in the 1920s a series of laws adopted which restricted the immigration; the most famous example of this is the Immigration Act of 1924. immigration of Europeans was limited by the fact that completely banned by Asians. Several states banned due to its influence exercised marriages between different races and passed laws for the sterilization of people who were referred to as " unworthy " in the sense of "inferior". Ultimately, it was loud Spiro thousands of people affected.

Spiro complains that in some inexplicable way, the archive location on the life and work Grants for decades was very poor; the sources have been cleaned up. In total, fell in the person Grants to trends together: the anti- democratic thinking of the old Anglo-Saxon East Coast establishment, an early green movement for the animal and other nature protection and eco - management and a racist eugenics.

Influence

Grants ideas have had an influence on Adolf Hitler and the emerging Nazi movement. Hitler sent an enthusiastic fan letter in which he referred to as " The Fall of the Great Race " (1925 published in German ) as "his bible" of Madison Grant. Hitler took over the talk of the "inferior " races; they should favor a stronger " Nordic race " disappear. That meant at Grant " nordisizing ", then " aufnorden " with the Nazis.

In his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence mentions the Norwegian assassin Anders Behring Breivik Madison Grant and sees himself as a defender of the white race.

Works (selection)

• The Passing of the Great Race or the Racial Basis of European History. Series: American Immigration Collection, Series 2 in 1916; 2 A. with a new foreword by Henry Fairfield Osborn. Scribner's Sons, New York 1918; Reprint of the 1916er edition o O. 2009 German: The demise of the big race. The races as the basis of European history. Julius Friedrich Lehmann, Munich 1925

• German: The conquest of a continent. The distribution of races in America. Metzner, Berlin 1937