Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 263 269
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Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci.
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Eugenics, politics and the state: social democracy and the Swiss  gardening state
V�ronique Mottier
Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL, UK
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Keywords: This article explores the connections between eugenics, politics and the state, taking the Swiss case as a
Eugenics
particular focus. It is argued that Switzerland provides a historical example of what Bauman [Bauman, Z.
Social democracy
(1989). Modernity and the Holocaust. Cambridge: Polity Press.] describes as  gardening states : states that
Gender
are concerned with eliminating the  bad weeds from the national garden and thereby constructing shar-
Sexuality
ply exclusionary national identities. The Swiss experiments with eugenics (1920s 1960s) can be seen as
Yenish
an example of an ongoing struggle against  difference . Against this backdrop I will examine, first, the
ways in which state regulation of reproductive sexuality, and other eugenic measures, became central
mechanisms for dealing with cultural and other  differences in the Swiss nation. Second, I will analyse
the gendered nature of such mechanisms, as well as the preoccupation with racial  difference exempli-
fied by eugenic policies towards  Gypsies . To conclude, I will examine the impact of political institutions
and political ideology, in particular, social democracy, on these eugenic gardening efforts.
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When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
1. Introductory comments The history of Swiss eugenics is intertwined with the constitu-
tion of the modern Swiss state. Whereas the Swiss Confederation of
The  science of eugenics emerged during the second half of the cantons was originally founded in 1471, the first Swiss federal state
nineteenth century, with the aim of assisting nation states in for- in the modern sense of the term, with a capital (Bern), a federal
mulating social policies which would improve the  quality of the government and administrative control over the national territory,
population. The growth of modern health and social policies from emerged only relatively recently, in 1848. Consequently, the Swiss
the turn of the twentieth century provided the institutional condi- efforts to construct a eugenic social order have been historically
tions for translating eugenic rhetoric into a policy programme. The conflated with the construction of the national order.
emerging welfare state also added an additional motive to that of The modern Swiss nation state encompasses four national lan-
preventing degeneracy: limiting public expenditure. Indeed, the guages and various religions. It consequently lacks the  cultural
 inferior categories of the national population were soon to be- stuff that commonly acts as national  glue . Instead, it constitutes,
come the main recipients of the expanding welfare institutions. to borrow the Swiss political scientist Kriesi s apt terminology, a
Limiting the numbers of the  weeds in the national garden there-  federation of nations which is held together by its political insti-
fore appeared a rational means of reducing welfare costs. Nowa- tutions, in particular, federalism, direct democracy, and armed
days, eugenics tends to be associated with the sinister large-scale neutrality (Kriesi, 2006). These institutionalise respect for cultural
experiments in social engineering of Nazi Germany. In truth, how- difference and incarnate a model of mutual tolerance based on the
ever, social democrat reformers were amongst the pioneers of eu- principle of  live and let live .
genic  science as well as policy practices in Europe. A number of This account of Swiss national identity, as formulated most
eugenic policies, such as forced sterilization of  degenerates , were prominently by Kriesi, has been highly influential. Persuasive
strongly promoted by the Left and first applied in countries such as though it is, I believe that the integrationist model of Swiss na-
Switzerland and Sweden. tional identity nevertheless neglects central features of the modern
E-mail address: [e-mail].
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doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2008.03.010
264 V. Mottier / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 263 269
Swiss nation state, most notably its exclusionary tendencies. In Citizens bodies were central targets in these relations of pasto-
contrast, I propose that taking a closer look at the history of Swiss ral care and social disciplinarisation. This bodily aspect of modern
eugenics suggests an alternative account of the constitution of the power is expressed in Foucault s concept of  bio-power (Foucault,
Swiss nation state. As I will demonstrate, eugenics can be seen as a 1990). Bio-power includes, first, disciplinarisation of the move-
central site of the Swiss struggle against  difference . Within this ments, capacities and behaviours of individual bodies; second, it
framework, gender, sexuality and  race have correspondingly been refers to the regulation of the welfare, health and education of
structuring dimensions of the Swiss trajectory into modernity, as the collective national body by state policies. The  conduct of con-
the growing body of recent critical historiography on eugenics duct involved in these practices of bio-power and governmentali-
exemplifies.1 ty, such as the eugenic regulation of the reproductive sexuality of
the national body, is dependent upon the constitution of a corpus
of expert knowledge, produced through careful observation and
2. Eugenics and the pastoral state
classification (see also Mottier, 2005). In the field of eugenics, Swit-
zerland was at the forefront on both the theoretical and practical
The term  eugenics was popularised by Sir Francis Galton in
levels. Swiss eugenicists made significant contributions to the
1883, to refer to the genetic improvement of the national  stock
international  science of eugenics, while important eugenicist
on the basis of the scientific study of  all influences that tend, in
practices and policies were pioneered in Switzerland.
however remote a degree, to give to the more suitable races or
The practices of care and normalisation involved in pastoral
strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less
power are internalised by individuals as contributing to the com-
suitable than they otherwise would have had (Galton, 1883, p. 25).
mon good. In this respect, pastoral power involves a normative
Galton regarded the evolutionary processes described by his cousin
articulation of collective identity as well. The national order of
Charles Darwin, in particular the ideas of natural selection and the
the welfare state is founded on the notions of community and sol-
survival of the fittest,2 as too slow and uncertain for modern needs.
idarity even though entitlement to welfare provisions is always
The complexities of modern scientific and cultural developments, he
conditional, and was, in the Swiss context, initially restricted to a
argued, put particularly high demands on political and other elites,
very limited number of specific categories of the population. Pasto-
whose intellectual capacities he deemed insufficiently evolved. The
ral power thus contributes to the forging of national identity
new science of eugenics aimed to assist governments in implement-
(ibid.).
ing social policies which would improve the quality of the national
The construction of the nation as an ordered system of exclu-
 breed . In opposition to the laissez faire of political liberalism, eugen-
sion and disciplinary regulation is central to the formation of na-
icists advocated active social engineering. The individual had a patri-
tional identity as well as to the workings of modern welfare. In
otic duty to contribute to the improvement of the national
the words of Zygmunt Bauman (1989, 1991), the modern nation
community through what Galton s student Karl Pearson (1998
state has emerged through a  quest for order ; its aim was to create
[1909], p. 170) termed a  conscious race-culture . Eugenics was thus
an orderly society through the dominant alliance of science and
from its origins deeply intertwined with social and political aims. It
reason. Sexuality is an important site of the modern quest for
emerged as both a science and a social movement. The term caught
order, as well as a central element of national identity. It is through
on rapidly, and numerous eugenics societies were established in
reproductive sexuality that the nation is biologically replaced,
Great Britain as well as in other countries, to be followed by the cre-
which turns it into a concern of the state (see also Mottier,
ation of International and World Leagues (see K�hl, 1997). Through
1998). As Foucault puts it,  Sexuality has always been the site
such social reform societies, as well as scientific disciplines such as
where the future of our species, and at the same time our truth
psychiatry, anthropology, biology and sexology, eugenicist dis-
as human subjects, are formed (Foucault, 1994, p. 257; my trans-
courses acquired institutional support.
lation). Consequently, sexuality is the prime target of  bio-power
The eugenicist concern with the improvement of the population
and, as such, fundamental to processes of disciplinarisation, nor-
through the regulation of reproductive sexuality reflected the
malisation and marginalisation of individuals. Female sexuality is
emergence of a wider preoccupation amongst Western industrial-
a particular target. As Yuval-Davis points out, female bodies and
ising nation states with the health and size of their population. In
 respectable female sexuality become the  gate-keepers of the
the context of accelerating industrialisation, the rapidly growing
moral as well as biological boundaries of the national community
urban population appeared as a potentially destabilising force,
(Yuval-Davis, 1989, p. 106). Female citizens and their bodies thus
whilst an orderly, healthy and prolific population came to be seen
became of particular interest in the eugenic disciplinarisation of
as a source of wealth (see Nye, 1999). The modern state thus
the nation.
twinned the exercise of disciplinary power with that of pastoral
power. On the one hand, modern disciplinary techniques, including
mechanisms of surveillance and normalisation within state and 3. Gender, sexuality, race
para-state institutions such as educational establishments and
prisons, aimed to produce orderly and docile subjects. On the other Swiss eugenic policies were closely bound up with the emerg-
hand, the population was cared for and protected by new welfare ing welfare system and shaped by the specifics of Swiss political
policies, which in turn involved both relations of care, and the institutions and, in particular, their federal structure. In the Swiss
establishment of further technologies of scrutiny, surveillance context, the terms racial hygiene and eugenics were used inter-
and disciplinarisation (Foucault, 1979, 1983). These modern tech- changeably, the former being the more widely used (Schwank,
niques of government, which Foucault termed  governmentality , 1996). The most important sites of racial hygiene discourse in
were not limited to action by the governmental structures of the Switzerland were the new disciplines of psychiatry and sexology.
central state, but included, more generally, all ways of directing Internationally, the best known Swiss  degeneracy experts (Aes-
and regulating the conduct of citizens (Foucault, 1991; see also chbacher, 1998, pp. 291) were the psychiatrist and sexologist
Dean, 1999). Auguste Forel (1848 1931), and the psychiatrists Eugen Bleuler
1
I refer in particular to recent archival research on Swiss German cantons by historians such as Gisela Hauss, Marietta Meier, Jakob Tanner, Regina Wecker, B�atrice Ziegler,
and their respective research teams, whose preliminary results are presented in Mottier & Mandach (2007), as well as to earlier work by Jeanmonod & Heller (2000, 2001) on
eugenics in French Switzerland. See also Schweizer (2002) on eugenics and psychiatry during the 2nd WW.
2
Darwin adopted the latter idea from Herbert Spencer in 1868.
V. Mottier / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 263 269 265
(1857 1939) and Ernst R�din (1874 1952).3 However, eugenic sci- majority on the ground of  feeblemindedness (Steck, 1935, p.
entific discourse was not limited to these fields, but encompassed a 877). Sterilization was relatively widespread in the canton of
wide range of disciplines and authors in Switzerland. Z�rich. As Dubach (2007, p. 189) reports, in the 1930s alone be-
The construction of the Swiss national order was at least partly tween 1,700 and 3,600 sterilizations were carried out on the basis
founded on what I have elsewhere termed the Swiss  dream of or- of approval from the psychiatric policlinic of Z�rich. The large
der (Mottier, 2000). The social and political order was seen to be majority of these concerned women who had requested permis-
 troubled by various categories of  disorderly citizens and non-cit- sion to have an abortion, which was often made conditional on
izens, such as Jews,  vagrants such as Yenish ( Gypsies ) and other sterilization. The arguments used in Z�rich tended to be primarily
 travellers , the mentally ill, the physically disabled, unmarried social and psychiatric, including sexual promiscuity, the inability
mothers or homosexuals. The eugenic conception of the national to financially support children, or illegitimacy of the children,
order was concerned with the elimination of such  troubles . The while explicitly eugenic arguments appeared in around 30% of
rational management of reproductive sexuality by the state was the recommendations for sterilization (ibid., pp. 191). Rosenow
a central mechanism for so doing. (1990, p. 94) reports data from the Z�rich guardianship office,
The emerging welfare state provided the means to translate eu- which mentions sixty sterilizations and six castrations carried
genic narratives of the nation into large-scale social experiments. It out primarily on the basis of eugenic arguments on individuals be-
also added a cost-saving motive to that of preventing degeneracy. tween 1908 and 1935, the majority women. Of these women,
The fact that, in the Swiss state, local, rather than federal, author- twenty-eight had been put under legal tutelage because of  feeble-
ities carry the financial burden of supporting  indigent members of mindedness , ten because of  mental illness and thirteen because
local communities also increased the appeal of the argument of of an  immoral lifestyle . In the canton of Bern, doctors tended to
cost reduction. The eugenic experiments in social engineering were use predominantly eugenic arguments, reflecting the preference
thus shaped by specific Swiss political institutions, and federalism of the director of the Bernese Women s Clinic Hans Guggisberg,
in particular. Indeed, federalism allowed for important cantonal who refused to accept social indications (see Ziegler, 1999). Argu-
differences in policy frameworks and practices (paralleling similar ments for sterilization had to be formulated within the legal frame-
inter-state variations in legal frameworks in the USA). Religious works, however. From 1931, local guidelines required psychiatric
differences, which partly overlapped with cantonal borders, also examination and no longer accepted either eugenic or social indi-
contributed to inter-cantonal variations. Reflecting more general cations alone as grounds for sterilization. Psychiatrists from the
differences in the ways in which bodily  deficiencies are perceived Bernese psychiatric clinic Waldau thus amalgamated psychiatric,
within Protestantism and Catholicism, Protestant cantons seem to eugenic and social arguments including the prevention of pregnan-
have been particularly receptive to eugenic discourses and cies for  morally deficient or  sexually pathological women, wel-
practices. fare dependency of future children, or a family history of mental
Eugenic ideas were influential in the formulation and imple- illness, suicide or epilepsy; recommending an average of twenty-
mentation of a number of Swiss pre and post-Second World War five women per year to be sterilized in the years 1935 1953
health and social policies which aimed to both discourage repro- (Hauss & Ziegler 2007). In the Canton of Basel, local medical guide-
duction by  inferior citizens ( negative eugenics), and to encourage lines issued in 1934 allowed for eugenic or social indications for
reproduction by  superior citizens ( positive eugenics). These in- sterilization. In practice, eugenic or social grounds (including a wo-
cluded forced sterilization, legitimised by the subordination of man s inability to conduct an  orderly household or  incapacity to
individual interests to the collective interest of the nation, educa- fulfill her motherly duties ) were most often used to further sup-
tional programmes, non-voluntary incarceration in psychiatric port medical indications (which included psychiatric conditions)
clinics, as well as other measures targeting, specifically, vagrants (Imboden et al., 2007). The gendered nature of these figures is
or Yenish. Worldwide, the first eugenic sterilization law was intro- comparable to the Swedish context, where Runcis (1998) reports
duced in Indiana in 1907, and by the 1930s almost two thirds of US that almost 95% of the 63,000 eugenic sterilizations between
states had similar legislation targeting, in particular, institutiona- 1930 and 1970 were carried out on women.
lised individuals such as criminals and those labelled as mentally As Jeanmonod & Heller (2000) demonstrate, the Vaud law in
ill. In Europe, Switzerland was the first country to introduce eugen- practice limited the number of sterilizations, as half of the applica-
ically motivated marriage interdiction legislation targeting the tions for sterilizations made in this period were rejected. The intro-
mentally ill in its Civil Code of 1907, which became effective in duction of a legal basis would, it was thought, allow for the
1912 (Wecker, 1998a, p. 169). Article 97 of this law prohibits mar- regulation and curtailing of practices of sterilization that were
riage to individuals who are  unable of discernment and  mentally commonplace, and this argument had played an important role
ill . In 1928, the Swiss canton of Vaud, after public appeals from in the debates around the adoption of the Vaud law, with many
Forel and the Soci�t� de Patronage des Ali�n�s du Canton de Vaud, psychiatrists opposing the law for this reason. There were occa-
adopted the first European eugenic sterilization law (followed by sional attempts to introduce national legislation: psychiatrists
Denmark in 1929, Germany in 1933, Sweden and Norway in petitioned for it in 1910 and academics continued to press the case
1934 and Finland in 1935). In addition, the canton s Criminal Code for legislation until well into the post-war period (these include a
of 1931 included a clause allowing for eugenically motivated legal dissertation by Hans-Rudolf B�ckli in 1954 which was in-
abortions. tended as a blueprint for a national sterilization law) (Huonker,
Reflecting the eugenicist focus on female bodies as the repro- 2003, p. 152). However, calls for the introduction of a federal ster-
ducers of the nation, the sterilization of  inferior categories of ilization law in the context of other ongoing legal reforms encoun-
the population was a strongly gendered practice. For example, tered opposition from the mid-1930s from doctors, who rejected
out of the fifty-seven eugenic sterilizations that were carried out the legal restrictions upon their discretionary power. Legal experts
on the basis of the Vaud law in the period between 1929 and were also generally hostile, fearing that the inclusion of a steriliza-
1936, only one was carried out on a man (Wecker, 1998b, p. tion clause would cause the rejection of the entire legal reform
220). In the years before the Vaud law, from 1919 to 1928, forty- package by the Catholic cantons. The Swiss Federal Council re-
five women and four men had been sterilized in this canton, the ported to parliament in 1944 that its family policies pursued three
3
R�din held Swiss as well as German nationality, though he was stripped of his Swiss passport after the second World War for  un-Swiss activities.
266 V. Mottier / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 263 269
aims: demographic, pedagogic and eugenic. Concerning the eu- Other  educational measures included the forceful removal of
genic dimension of its family protection measures, the Council sta- over 600 Yenish children from their families, to be raised in
ted that  the state must help to prevent the founding of families orphanages, workhouses, foster homes, psychiatric and penal insti-
which would produce hereditarily diseased offspring, and encour- tutions. Yenish is the term for the most significant group of  Gyp-
age the founding and stability of families who are hereditarily sies present in Switzerland (others being the Roma and Sinti).
healthy (Switzerland, Bundesrat, 1944, p. 868; my translation). Yenish have traditionally lived a nomadic lifestyle in countries
However, Parliament agreed that a federal law was not really nec- such as Switzerland, Germany, France and Austria (and in smaller
essary, since sterilization practices were already widespread any- numbers, in Luxemburg, Belgium, Holland and Italy), economically
way (Wecker, 2003, p. 108). At the cantonal level, no other Swiss sustained by collecting and selling ironware, repairing pans, pots
canton ever adopted a sterilization law, preferring local guidelines and knives, and, in more recent times, recycling. Current estimates
such as in the case of Bern in 1931, and agreements between local put the number of Yenish still living in Switzerland today at around
authorities and doctors. 30,000 persons, and at several hundred thousand in Europe as a
As in other countries, the majority of legal eugenic steriliza- whole. Throughout the history of the Swiss state regular persecu-
tions in Switzerland were carried out on young female social tion of  vagabonds or  beggars had been carried out by Swiss local
deviants: mostly unmarried women from lower social classes, liv- authorities. In addition, the creation of the modern federal state in
ing in poor conditions, having had children out of wedlock, and 1848 led rapidly to the attempt to control all inhabitants of the na-
labelled as  maladapted ,  sexually promiscuous , of  low intelli- tional territory; in particular, the 1850 Heimatlosat law, which de-
gence ,  mentally ill , or  feebleminded . The general categories of scribed nomadism as a  national scourge , allowed for the
mental illness and feeblemindedness were notoriously vague. expulsion from the national territory of anyone who did not pos-
The famous eugenic psychiatrist Bleuler, for example, in his Man- sess official identity papers that demonstrated membership of a lo-
ual of psychiatry, defined the terms  to include anything that devi- cal community. This was followed by the 1912 Intercantonal
ates from the norm (Bleuler, 1916, p. 476), whereas his former Conference of heads of police, which decided to imprison  Gypsies
student Maier s dissertation on the term  moral idiocy extended without identity papers in workhouses until they could be identi-
the notion to include moral flaws (Maier, 1908). The policing of fied and expulsed from the national borders. Switzerland was also
femininity and respectable female sexuality appears as a central an active member of the International Coordination of Policies To-
motive in the practice of eugenic sterilization, since  dirtiness wards  Gypsies which was located in Berlin until the Second World
and  moral deficiency (both of which could include sexual pro- War and from 1947 in Paris.
miscuity),  disorderly housekeeping ,  loose morals ,  uninhibited The notorious child removal operation of the Kinder der Landst-
female sexuality and  nymphomania were considered as signs rasse was carried out by the federal agency Pro Juventute from 1926
of mental illness and hereditary degeneracy.4 Moreover, steriliza- to 1972 under the directorship of Alfred Siegfried and his succes-
tion was thought to be partly able to moderate female complaints sors Peter D�beli and Clara Reust. The operation nationalized the
such as  hysteria ,  nervosity ,  masturbatory insanity ,  nymphoma- struggle against travellers, and involved administrative registra-
nia and sexual  abnormalcy more generally, and was therefore also tion and the removal of travellers children at as early an age as
used prophylactically (Wecker, 1998b, p. 223). Men labelled as sex- possible, as well as the prohibition on any further contact between
ually  abnormal such as exhibitionists or homosexuals were simi- parents and children. The stated aim of Kinder der Landstrasse was
larly submitted to therapeutic castrations with the aim to not to improve living conditions for the children of the  ambulants
moderate their deviant sexual drives, often under the pressure of and  tinkers , but to eradicate the national  scourge of vagrancy by
long-term internment as the only alternative (Huonker, 2003, pp.  appropriate measures of placement and education (Leimgruber
232 ff.); while sterilisation and castration of men also developed et al., 1998, p. 29). The forced removal of the children of travellers
in the context of the legal punishment of sex crimes (Dubach, was partly legitimized on eugenic grounds. As Leimgruber et al.
2007). (ibid., pp. 56 ff.) report, traveller children were considered racially
Exact figures on the number of sterilizations in other Swiss can- inferior, following previous psychiatric studies carried out, in par-
tons are not yet available. Historians seem to agree, however, that ticular, at the psychiatric clinic Waldhaus in Chur. Psychiatrists
the practice became relatively widespread in Switzerland, espe- there had been working for many years in the tradition of racial
cially amongst individuals who were already institutionalised in biology, carrying out anthropometric and genealogical research
those psychiatric clinics that were the playgrounds of the eugeni- on Yenish individuals and families, who were labeled as  amoral
cist ideologues. psychopaths ,  nymphomaniacs , or  irredeemable alcoholics . In
While sterilization policies were the most extreme form of eu- his influential work Psychiatrische Familiengeschichte (Psychiatric
genic regulation of reproductive sexuality by the pastoral state, family histories), published in 1919, the psychiatrist Josef Joerger
these technologies of bio-power were complemented by  preven- thus came to describe  vagrancy, delinquency, immorality, feeble-
tive educational policies. Following Forel s and other campaigners mindedness and madness, poverty as hereditarily transmittable
insistence on the necessity of eugenicist sexual education and mar- traits (Joerger, 1919, p. 1; my translation). However, Joerger also
riage advice, eugenics entered the educational curriculum. In addi- believed in the environmental theory of child development,
tion, a Central Agency for Marriage and Sex Advice was founded in according to which inherent hereditary flaws could be  corrected
Z�rich in 1932, as well as in other locations; it organised exhibi- by good racial hygiene, including placement in a  better family
tions and conferences on themes such as  hereditary responsibil- or educational environment. The founder of the Kinder der Landst-
ity ,  psychiatric eugenic advice on marital candidates (1930s) rasse operation and its director until 1959, Alfred Siegfried, shared
and  prevention of hereditarily diseased offspring (1949) (see Joerger s belief in the redeeming power of education, as did other
Gerodetti, 2006). Such institutions and activities aimed to instill eugenicists. Where education failed to  improve a Yenish child,
in Swiss citizens a sense of patriotic duty, encouraging, in particu- sterilization and other measures (such as refusal to grant permis-
lar, physically and mentally healthy and morally respectable cou- sion to marry) should prevent further degenerate offspring a view
ples to contribute to their fatherland by producing children of which Siegfried promoted until well into the 1960s (Leimgruber
 superior quality. et al., 1998, p. 60). In addition, Yenish were also placed in penal
4
See, for example, Jeanmonod and Heller s (2000, 2001) research on the Canton de Vaud, Wecker (1998b), p. 222, and Huonker (1990, 2003), p. 101, on Swiss German cantons.
V. Mottier / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 263 269 267
institutions when authorities argued that no other alternatives measures. Certain local authorities refused to cooperate with Pro
were available, or that there was a risk of flight. Juventute, citing their disagreement with its policies. Pro Juventute
Before taking up the directorship of Kinder der Landstrasse also complained that certain local police agents would  systemati-
which he held for several decades, Alfred Siegfried had been a cally forget to deal with the Yenish individuals on their territory.6
schoolteacher in Basel who had lost his post due to a conviction The canton of Chur, which had the largest traveller population,
for a pedophiliac relationship with one of his young male students seems to have been most active in implementing the removal of
which local authorities at the time chose to pass over in silence. His Yenish children. More generally, the Swiss German cantons and
successor, Peter D�beli, would later be removed from his post at the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino tended to be more cooperative
Pro Juventute due to a similar conviction for sexual abuse of his than local authorities in French-speaking Switzerland. Indeed, only
charges, and replaced with Clara Reust (Huonker & Ludi, 2001, p. very few cases of child removal have been recorded in French-speak-
45). Echoing similar sexual abuse accusations in orphanages in Ire- ing Switzerland, though reasons for this stark difference are unclear.
land and other countries, Yenish victims of the child removals later Second, parents sometimes exercised their right to legal appeals, and
reported that they had suffered sexual abuse by care personnel as were at times successful in doing so. The large majority of victims,
well as Siegfried himself.5 More generally, the policy of systematic however, either did not have access to the necessary legal expertise,
destruction of Yenish culture that the Kinder der Landstrasse opera- or lacked the financial means to take advantage of it.
tion entailed, has been described as a form of  genocide by contem-
porary Yenish activists (Capus, 2006); in this respect it should be
4. Concluding remarks
noted, however, that it is unclear whether the primary aim of the
child placements was the weeding out of the Yenish, or rather the
International debates and scholarly analyses of eugenics over
pruning and grafting of stocks which were perceived to have run
the past two decades have commonly considered the presence of
wild.
eugenic sterilization laws as an indicator of the importance of eu-
The legal bases for child removal practices were more often fed-
genic practices in respective national contexts. The Swiss case
eral adoption and guardianship legislation rather than penal law.
demonstrates the problematic nature of such an assumption; not
Penal dispositions could be drawn upon too, however, by the can-
only were eugenic sterilizations in most cantons instead applied
tons which were responsible for the local application of concrete
on the basis of medical guidelines, or without any legal basis at
measures, as well as by other institutions involved, such as Pro
all, but also, as we have seen in the case of Vaud, the only canton
Juventute and the charity Seraphische Liebeswerke. Two articles of
which did introduce a sterilization law, the main effect of the intro-
the civil code were especially important supports for the Kinder
duction of the law was in fact to reduce the number of steriliza-
der Landstrasse operation. They defined the categories of individu-
tions that were carried out. Interestingly, in some states of the
als who should be put under legal tutelage as follows:  any adult
USA the introduction of legislation permitting sterilization without
who, due to mental illness or feeblemindedness, is incapable of
consent in the first decades of the twentieth century similarly re-
managing his affairs, needs care and permanent help, or puts other
duced the number of sterilizations, which had previously been car-
persons in danger (Art. 369CC), and  any adult who puts himself or
ried out solely on the professional authority of doctors in
his family at risk of indigence, in need of care and permanent help
institutions such as homes for the mentally retarded and state-
or puts other persons in danger, due to his financial extravagance,
run psychiatric hospitals.
drunkenness, bad behaviour or bad management (Art. 370CC)
More generally, the aim of this article has not been primarily to
(quoted in Leimgruber et al., 1998, p. 45). These two articles of
provide a detailed historical analysis of Swiss eugenics, but, rather
the civil code, together with others which regulated parental
to use current historiography on eugenics to retrace the emergence
authority, allowed individuals who had not committed any legal
in modernity of the Swiss pastoral state as a gardening state. I have
offence to be placed under legal tutelage or in workhouses. Their
thus been concerned with a wider question: how can we use
inherent  laziness ,  bad behaviour and lack of fixed abode was en-
eugenics as a way of thinking about the complexities of relations
ough to define them as a threat to public order. Children could be
between sexuality and the state, and how has this impacted on
put under legal guardianship on the basis of Article 285CC, by
the constitution of the modern Swiss nation? In this light, there
removing them from parents who were  incapable or prohibited
are four further points to make.
from exercising parental authority, or guilty of serious offences
First, we need to interrogate the conventional claim that Swiss
against authority or serious negligence ; they could also be re-
national identity is based upon mutual tolerance and  respect for
moved from their families if  the father and mother do not fulfill
difference . Although this presentation is by no means inaccurate,
their parental obligations (Art. 283CC) or if  the child s physical
I suggest that it overemphasises cohesion and integrative capacity,
or intellectual development is threatened, or in the case of moral
leaving us without conceptual tools for explaining how sharply
neglect (Art. 284CC) (quoted in Leimgruber et al., 1998, p. 46).
exclusionary practices such as eugenic policy experiments could
When parental authority was withdrawn from a married couple
have been possible. In other words, it gives us only half of the pic-
(unmarried parents having no legal parental rights anyway) a
ture. As the historical experience with eugenics suggests, the truth
practice which, incidentally, was not restricted to Yenish families
is a lot messier and more ambivalent. The constitution of the mod-
alone (see Ramsauer, 2000) a child could be offered up for adop-
ern Swiss nation state has been characterised by a struggle against
tion without the knowledge of its biological parents.
difference as much as by the institutional accommodation of differ-
Despite the large scope for interpretation offered by the vague-
ence. In other words, in addition to the Swiss political institutions,
ness of these legal dispositions, several measures taken by the Kin-
gender, sexuality and  race also constitute structuring dimensions
der der Landstrasse clearly lacked legal basis, and cases existed
of the Swiss trajectory into modernity. Consideration of the Swiss
where children were removed from their parents in the absence
experiments with eugenics consequently leads to an alternative
of any previous legal decision (Leimgruber et al., 1998, p. 49). How-
account of the Swiss nation. While not denying the importance
ever, there is also documentary evidence of resistance. First, not all
of the founding political institutions in the construction of Swiss
local authorities were equally enthusiastic participants in removal
national identity, I argue that the focus on the institutionalised
5
See Thomas Huonker s online Yenish archive (Huonker, n.d.).
6
Quoted in Leimgruber et al. (1998), p. 53.
268 V. Mottier / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 263 269
expression of religious or linguistic  difference fails to take into ac- decentralised, scattered and unsystematic nature both of the institu-
count other important historical discourses and practices, which tional design and of the implementation of Swiss eugenic practices
have been concerned not with respect for diversity, but with the which most accurately defines the nature of the Swiss eugenic expe-
small-scale eradication of some  differences : those deemed rience. Swiss eugenicists pursued their  dream of order both nation-
 degenerate or  un-Swiss . In a nation state founded on linguistic ally and internationally, but it is important to recognise that there
and religious differences, some differences were less acceptable never existed a eugenic  masterplan , either at the level of planning,
than others. Eugenically  inferior categories of the population were or in terms of execution. Instead, numerous, frequently incoherent,
held up as the unacceptable  other to the  good citizens , whose sometimes contradictory, eugenic discourses and practices sprang
stock would form the building blocks of the future nation. As we up from various institutional settings at the micro-level, cross-cut
have seen, eugenic  science thus played an important role in this with other disciplinary motivations and practices which were not al-
struggle against difference, not only as part of the symbolic con- ways intentionally eugenic. These discourses and practices also fol-
struction of Swiss nationhood but also as the foundation of social lowed different institutional  careers , with most practices, in
policies which aimed to eradicate the weeds from the Swiss particular sterilization, having faded away by the 1950s/1960s,
garden. while others, such as the marriage advice bureaux, disappeared
Second, female sexuality and women s bodies were of pivotal much earlier.
importance to the gardening efforts of the modern Swiss state Fourth, the eugenic policies that were carried out by state and
(see also Mottier 2006). They have been central sites in the Swiss para-state actors received support from various ideological posi-
struggle against difference, but in complex ways. Women were tions. Whereas most political resistance to eugenics came from
particular targets of eugenic policies applied by the state as well Catholic and liberal parties, the most enthusiastic support came
as by institutions such as psychiatric clinics, hospitals and schools. from right wing and social democratic parties. Some women s
While sterilizations constituted the most extreme form of eugenic movements across the political spectrum rejected eugenics,
regulation of reproductive sexuality, these technologies of bio- whereas others supported it enthusiastically, and at times partici-
power were complemented by  preventive educational policies, pated in its implementation (see Gerodetti, 2004). If we look at the
as we have seen. Women were, again, particularly targeted here role of social democracy more closely, it needs to be recognised
since they were seen as the primary reproductive agents. Reflect- that prominent social democrats such as Forel played a key role
ing the eugenicist focus on female bodies as the reproducers of both in the promotion of eugenics and in its policy formulation.
the nation, the sterilization of  inferior categories of the population In addition, social democrat local authorities such as Basel, Bern
was also a strongly gendered practice as the large majority of eu- and Z�rich in the late 1920s and 1930s formed a political opportu-
genic sterilizations were carried out on women. As we have seen, nity structure which was particularly conducive to the implemen-
eugenic interventions were a means of policing female sexuality tation of eugenic policies. It could be argued that it is not social
and respectable femininity more generally. Men were significantly democratic thought as such, but the development of the welfare
less often subjected to eugenic castrations, and, when they were, state and the attendant argument of cost reduction which was
eugenicists seemed as much preoccupied with the policing of  nor- favourable to the implementation of eugenic measures. Whilst
mal masculinity through the eradication of  abnormal male sexu- not entirely incorrect, such an argument would, however, fail to
ality and  perversion as they were with male reproductive agency acknowledge the centrality of the welfare state to the social dem-
(see Huonker, 2003; Imboden & Ritter, 2005). Recognizing the ocrat political project, as well as the ideological affinities between
importance of the gender regime for the workings of the modern state intervention into citizens sexuality and eugenic politics (see
state is not to say, however, that the state exercises male power also Mottier & Gerodetti, 2007). Far from constituting an  accident
over its female citizens in any straightforward way. Women were in the history of social democracy, the eugenic social experiments
often important agents in the implementation of eugenic mea- fit in comfortably with core elements of social democratic ideology,
sures, while men were sometimes its victims, as we have seen. in particular the subordination of the individual to the collective
The examples of the Kinder der Landstrasse operation and the mar- interest of the national community.
riage ban on the mentally ill suggest, moreover, that gender was To conclude, we need to ask: how important was eugenics in
not the only relevant category here; some eugenic practices were Switzerland, and how did it compare internationally? On the one
strongly linked to racism and disability, while social class was a hand, as we have seen, Swiss eugenicists such as Forel, Bleuler
differentiating factor in the application of eugenic measures. and R�din prominently contributed to the development of the
Whereas eugenics in other national contexts such as Britain was international body of eugenic  science , and several eugenic prac-
influenced by the context of colonial empire, Switzerland had no tices and laws were first pioneered in Switzerland. On the other
colonies and its population was, racially, very homogeneous. In hand, although national figures for the number of eugenic inter-
the absence of external outsiders to target, eugenic gardening ef- ventions are not yet available and possibly never will be, when
forts turned instead to the internal  others (who were sometimes pressed, historians estimate on the basis of current research that
racialised, as in the case of the Yenish). total numbers of forced sterilizations, for example, are likely to
Third, the role of  the state in Swiss eugenics needs unpacking; run to several thousands. Compared to the 63,000 Swedish sterili-
the Swiss state did not act as a homogeneous actor in this arena. zations or the 400,000 forced sterilisations of Nazi Germany, the
Overall, the eugenic mechanisms of the Swiss welfare state were Swiss estimates are much lower. Moreover, when seen as absolute
characterised by a mix of intervention by the federal state, such numbers in a population of around six million, it is clear that only a
as through Pro Juventute and federal legislation prohibiting mar- tiny minority of the population was personally subjected to eu-
riage for the mentally ill; local forms of intervention through legis- genic measures. Should we therefore dismiss the importance of
lation and administrative measures at the communal and cantonal eugenics for the history of the Swiss nation state? I would like to
level; and para-state actors such as institutional psychiatry. answer that question in the negative; after all, we need to measure
Reflecting the complexities of federalism, numerous para-state the success of a democratic state not only by its historic achieve-
institutions such as schools, psychiatric clinics and hospitals oper- ments, but also, and perhaps primarily so, by the way in which it
ated in different and sometimes contradictory ways.7 It is this treats its minorities.
7
Similar observations have been made in the Scandinavian context (Koch, 2004).
V. Mottier / Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. & Biomed. Sci. 39 (2008) 263 269 269
Jeanmonod, G., & Heller, G. (2001). Eug�nisme et st�rilisation non volontaire en Suisse
Acknowledgements
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Joerger, J. (1919). Psychiatrische Familiengeschichte. Berlin: Julius Springer.
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