During the period between late nineteenth century and the end of the Second World War, science became a tool for categorizing and hierarchizing people of different races, phenotypes, and hereditary qualities in Europe. Reliance on science as a mechanism for ‘purifying’ and ‘fixing’ the society increased significantly after the First World War. Due to this, radical measures and practices were adopted by states. This essay will demonstrate the strong influence of science in creating ‘others’ within European societies. It will do so by examining two nation-states and their relation to science as means of constructing an ideal society: Romania’s homogenization efforts and Roma, and Italy’s Lombrosian mentality. After the First World War and the creation of Greater Romania, modernization as well as political and socio-economic improvement became two vital issues. Compared to Romania, powerful Western European stateshad (according to Romania) one thing that Romania had not: a ‘homogenized’ population. In Romania, ‘After 1918, with the doubling of the country’s territory and population, the proportion of ethnic minorities in the total population rose to almost thirty per cent.’[1] The logic behind homogenization being uniformity and national strength, Romania’s strategy became ‘homogenizing’ the ethnically mixed population, thereby agreeing to adopt ‘…central state uniformity and minority-hostile strategies of homogenization…’[2] This was achievable with the construction of organizations and institutes, making laboratory work possible. Newly established organizations and institutes encouraged eugenic research, enabling the discovery of varieties and numbers of minorities in Romania. Implicitly, this strengthened discriminatory ideas. Among the first of these establishments is The Institute for Hygiene and Social Hygiene at the University of Cluj. During the early 1930’s, the institute ‘… undertook serial genetic examinations of about 17,000 individuals from different ethnic groups in Transylvania’, and aimed to expose data concerning the ethnic position of Szeklers – a Hungarian minority.[3] Results of the serological analyses suggested that while Szeklers were assimilable, other Hungarian minorities were not. The fundamental determinator behind this result lies in the theory that Szeklers are Magyarised Romanians, which means that they are of Romanian and Turkic descent. Given that during the interwar years, ‘… 500,000 Szeklers constituted more than eighty per cent of the total population of districts of Ciuc, Odorhei and Trei Scaune, and over forty per cent of the population of the neighbouring district of Mures’, sensation around the topic heightened.[4] To illustrate, a Geography professor at Cluj, Sabin Oprenau proposed potential assimilation strategies for Szeklers like: ‘adduced folklore, place names, and a supposed ethno-psychological proximity between Szeklers and Romanians…’[5] For unassimilable Hungarian minorities Sabin Maniula, director of the Romanian Central statistical Institute, advised ‘cross-border population exchanges and new Romanian settlements’ in pursuit of the ‘extermination’ of these people.[6] Another contributing organization was ASTRA, a Transylvania-based Romanian nationalist and cultural association. In 1926, ASTRA aided the annexation of a Department of Bio-Politics and Eugenics to Cluj Institute of Hygiene, which generated strategies for ethno-political measures and legitimization of Romanian political leadership in districts dense with Szeklers.[7] This points out that organizations andinstitutes were in close relation, serving each other as a support mechanism. Not to mention, organizations’ ability to manipulate university departments display their power within the education system. Furthermore, ASTRA supported researchers with their studies too; In 1924, Sabin Manuila and Gheorghe Popoviciu, a Professor of Paediatrics and Pharmacology at Cluj, led serial racial tests on ‘… 2,512 Romanians, Hungarians and members of other Transylvanian ethnic groups.’[8] Manuila and Popoviciu relied on serological analysis – a method thought to provide precise results on race determination ‘… through isoagglutinin reactions of the human blood.’[9] This research further supports the claim made earlier, which isthat organizations and institutes fuelled ongoing research, simultaneously normalizing the categorization of peoples according to their ethnicities and racial backgrounds. Acquired through science, new data on different minorities and their numbers illustrated the urgency of homogenizing the society. Among minorities targeted as ‘obstacles’ were Roma; several studies were conducted, Ion Chelcea’s field study being a preeminent one. Chelcea’s research comprised of different Roma tribes in 63 villages, concentrating on population size and geographical distribution. The study held sedentary Roma groups and ‘underdeveloped’ nomadic groups separately. This revelation combined previous biological ideas – one being Iordache Facaoaru’s claim that compared to that of Aryans, Roma are mentally less intelligent and physically less strong – with sociological notions such as profession and social class, socio-economic integration, and gradation of linguistic assimilation.[10] According to these inferences, Chelcea determined the ‘types’ of assimilable Roma by disintegrating the minority into three ‘others’: the decision was that the Corturari were unassimilable nomads while the sedentary Rudari and Tigani de Sat are differently assimilated groups.[11]Following this, Chelcea’s ‘taxonomy of lifestyle’ suggested the legitimization of discriminatory population policies and criminalization for better ‘public health.’[12] These baseless claims prove one thing, and that is justification of discrimination through science. By doing so, many researchers like Chelcea drew attention to the ‘question of Roma’ and labelled them as the ‘others’ of Romania, suggesting the kind of measures that should be taken against them.
The Romanian government took researchers’ inputs as a chance to start homogenizing Romania by persecuting Roma. Efforts were first realized during Ion Antonescu’s leadership between 1940 and 1944. First-time anti-Roma measures were discussed was on 7 February 1941 by the Council of Ministers.[13] The council mainly discussed ethnopolitics, hence Antonescu proposed ‘… a forced transfer of Bucharest Roma to the Baragan plain’, which was carried out in June 1942. It is known that 25,000 Roma were deported to Transnistria, consequently ‘… Transnistria became to Romania much what the General Government was to the Third Reich: the place for executing racial policy.’[14] In fact, ‘… Transnistria was not a Romanian territory and was not to become one…’[15] This means that Transnistria was suitable for keeping the Roma. Simply, the ‘undesired’ Roma population was ‘exterminated’ by being kept in an enclosed territory that is a land for ‘others.’ This solution sought homogenization, modernization, and political and socio- economic stability for Romania. The relation between nation and state was one of scientific knowledge, having its foundations inbiology. This belief constructed mutualness and support of organizations, institutes, and the state in the matter of homogenizing and creating ‘others.’ A similar example of utilizing science for reconstructing society was carried forth by Cesare Lombroso, a criminologist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, who sought to identify, document, and contain criminals ‘lurking’ among the public. His approach in criminal anthropology influenced Italy remarkably, the most prominent examples being scientific policemen and the 1930 Penal Code. Lombroso argued that it is possible to predetermine criminals by inspecting certain physical and psychological elements. Lombroso specifically relied on craniology as a physical element. For instance, Lombroso examined thief and arsonist Giuseppe Villella’s skull and discovered something unusual: ‘… on the occipital part, where a spine would normally be found on a human skull, there was, instead, a distinct anomaly that he called the median occipital fosetta.’[16] Lombroso claimed that this anomaly is hereditary and indicates the person is born a criminal. Similarly, in the first chapter of his book Criminal Man, Lombroso supports his craniological arguments with atable chart.[17] On the table, Lombroso has noted the following: province, name, age, crime, and circumference of the cranium. This detail suggests that location and age are relevant to the investigation, hence associating them with criminals. Lombroso determines that the fundamental difference lies in the fact that most criminals have a smaller circumference than that of ‘normal’ people. These examples illustrate that during the time, one condition that triggered otherising people in Italy was heredity.Psychological characteristics are split into two as verbal and non-verbal (mainly consisting of body language) manifestations.[18] Lombroso collected and analysed prisoners’ writings – mostly proclamations, poems, and even signatures – and published them in Prison Palimpsests. Recurring subjects in these writings are as follows: ‘… crime committed, sex, religion, prison, and revenge.’[19] The result of his analyses lines out the ‘criminal type’: ‘… egocentric, detached from others, vain, vengeful, and deceptively religious.’[20]Ide Lombroso further explains that criminals do notspeak the same language as truthful men because they feel different, thus speak different. Best example for non-verbal manifestations are tattoos: Lombroso argued that tattoos were common among criminals which was a way of communication for them. To demonstrate, the first edition of Criminal Man included a picture with ‘… a prisoner displaying several tattoos, including snakes, an emblem of Savoy on his penis and crossed daggers surrounded by the motto ‘I swear to revenge myself’ on his chest.’[21] This exampleencapsulates both verbal and non-verbal characteristics. Briefly, Lombrosian mentality seeks to distinguish criminals within the society by relying on a list of indicators which are categorized as physical and psychological characteristics. This rationale serves as a ‘rulebook’ for ‘hunting down’ and ‘captivating’ marginalized people. To operationalise his rationale that is designed to fit marginalised people, Lombroso invented the ‘scientific police.’ The scientific police became an integral part of Italy in separating criminals from society. Aiming to use scientific tools such as photography and telegraphy combined with knowledge of the criminal man, scientific policing became popular through the establishment of the School of Scientific Policing in 1907 by Salvatore Ottolenghi.[22] Close proximity to prisons enabled students to study prisoners and analyse fingerprints and mugshots. This procedureuses prisons as an enclosed space for ‘experimenting’ with prisoners. The juxtaposition of ‘honest’ men and prisoners further reinforces the marginalization of criminals. Development of the ‘Ottolenghi method’ of anthropo-biographical cards in 1902 included ‘… the body, the psyche, and the past history of the criminal…’[23] These cards were used to better identify criminals. To demonstrate, Ottolenghi claims that ‘fighting criminality’ should line up with ‘… those methods which have triumphed in the treatment of the insane (…) and have proved a marked success in animal breeding and even the taming of wild beasts.’[24] This comment associates criminals with animals, advises medical treatment, and interferes with the management of these people. The essence of ‘Ottolenghi method’ lies in the interaction between social, political, and scientific aspects: a coalition of sort between politics and science in order to control and contain society. Shortly, scientific policing was Lombrosian mentality ‘in flesh’, tackling undesired individuals according to their biological and psychological traits. Moreover, this rationale influenced the 1930 Italian Penal Code: the code uses ‘suspiciousness’ to measure dangerousness. Evidently, Article 203 concerning social danger states that a person is socially dangerous when they commit an action opposing criminal law – even if not attributable or punishable – is probable.[25] Similarly, title of the second book is ‘Crimes against the Personality of the State.’[26] Both examples indicate that criminal is whoever the state considers a threat to itself. Shortly, Lombrosian logic was used in parts of the system to ensure that dangerous ‘others’ were kept away from the rest.
To conclude, from late nineteenth century to 1945, European societies turned to science to ‘fix’ anomalies by othering certain groups. Eugenics to craniology; serology to criminal anthropology, academics found ways to categorize those who were distinct in looks, thoughts, and origins. Combined with politics, marginalization of peoples became a procedure practiced on two scales: by nation-states and researchers. Consequently, science became a support mechanism for constructing an ideal society.
Duru Akin has just completed her first year of a BA in English Literature and History at Durham University (College of St Hild and St Bede).
Notes:
[1] Michael Wedekind, The Mathematization of the Human Being: Anthropology and Ethno-Politics in Romania During the Late 1930s and Early 1940s’, New Zealand Slavonic Journal, p. 28.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Idem, p. 32.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Idem, p. 33.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Idem, p. 34.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Idem, pp. 46-48.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Idem, p. 42.
[14] Viorel Achim, The Roma in Romanian History, (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004) p. Roma in Romania p. 182, and Wedekind, ‘The Mathematization of the Human Being: Anthropology and Ethno-Politics in Romania During the Late 1930s and Early 1940s’, p. 50
[15] Achim, The Roma in Romanian History, p. 184.
[16] Emilia Musumeci, ‘Against the Rising Tide of Crime: Cesare Lombroso and Control of the “Dangerous Classes” in Italy, 1861-1940, Crime, History & Societies p. 86.
[17] Cesare Lombroso, ‘Criminal Craniums (Sixty-six Skulls)’, Criminal Man, 2nd ed. (New York: Duke University Press, 2007) pp. 46-47.
[18] Musumeci, p. 88.
[19] Idem, p. 89.
[20] Idem, p. 88.
[21] Idem, p. 89.
[22] Idem, p. 91.
[23] Idem, p. 92.
[24] Salvatore Ottolenghi, Victor von Borosini, ‘The Scientific Police’, Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, p. 877.
[25] Articolo 203. Pericolosita’ Sociale, 8 Codice Penale Italiano (1930)
[26] Giulio Battaglini, ‘Fascist Reform of the Penal Law in Italy’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, p. 278.
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