Tudor Georgescu

Panel 5 The German Minorities

Abstract

While it appears peculiar that the Transylvanian Saxon eugenic discourse has largely evaded academic scrutiny, it embodies a highly indicative case study of the lure eugenic thought could exert on ethnic minorities battling a sense of anthropological crisis. Pursuing a eugenic movement that emerged under Dr. Heinrich Siegmund’s tutelage in the early twentieth century, tracing the process of its politicisation, radicalisation, and gradual translation into executable population policies by the mid 1930’s, this paper focuses on tracing the Saxon eugenic discourse’s conceptual and methodological evolution during the interwar period.