Ernst Rudin, born in Switzerland in 1874, became a prominent German psychiatrist and geneticist during the first half of the 20th century. His academic journey and research pursuits later intersected with broader societal movements. He passed away in 1952 in Munich, West Germany.
From Psychiatry to Genetics
Ernst Rudin began his medical studies in 1893, attending universities in Geneva, Lausanne, Berlin, and Zurich before graduating in 1898. He worked as an assistant to psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who coined the term “schizophrenia,” at the Burghölzli in Zurich in 1899. Rudin completed his PhD and then a psychiatric residency at a prison in Moabit, Berlin.
In 1907, Rudin moved to Munich to work with Emil Kraepelin, an influential psychiatrist. Kraepelin had developed the diagnostic distinction between “dementia praecox” (later renamed schizophrenia) and “manic-depressive illness.” Rudin’s early work focused on understanding the hereditary components of mental illnesses, developing the concept of “empirical genetic prognosis” for mental disorders.
Rudin published his initial findings on the genetics of schizophrenia in 1916. He proposed a two-recessive-gene theory to explain the inheritance patterns he observed. His 1916 epidemiological study on the inheritance of dementia praecox utilized large, systematically collected samples and statistical analyses. Rudin also conducted a study on the inheritance of “manic-depressive insanity” between 1922 and 1925, which was completed as a manuscript but never published.
Shaping the Eugenics Movement
Ernst Rudin was significantly influenced by his brother-in-law, Alfred Ploetz, who championed the ideas of social Darwinism and “racial hygiene” in Germany after 1890. Rudin became an early advocate for “racial hygiene,” a form of eugenics aimed at improving the human race by controlling who could reproduce. He campaigned for this early on, even arguing for the sterilization of “incurable alcoholics” at a 1903 conference, though his proposal was initially rejected.
In 1904, Rudin was appointed co-editor-in-chief of the newly established Archive for Racial Hygiene and Social Biology. The following year, he co-founded the German Society for Racial Hygiene alongside Ploetz, an organization that soon gained international reach. This movement sought to promote the reproduction of the “genetically fit” and to eliminate “undesirable” traits from the population.
Rudin became a prominent figure in the intellectual and organizational development of the eugenics movement, both in Germany and internationally. He was a leading German representative at the First International Congress for Mental Hygiene in Washington, D.C., in 1930, where he advocated for eugenics. In 1932, he became President of the International Federation of Eugenics Organizations, holding this office until 1934.
Architect of Racial Hygiene Policies
Ernst Rudin played a direct and instrumental role in the formulation and execution of the Nazi regime’s eugenics policies. After the Nazi party came to power in 1933, Rudin and his colleagues at the Genealogic-Demographic Department of the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich were central to implementing and justifying the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring” of 1933.
Rudin co-authored the official commentary for this law, providing scientific justification for its measures. This law mandated the compulsory eugenic surgical sterilization of individuals diagnosed with “genetic” conditions such as “feeble-mindedness,” schizophrenia, manic-depressive insanity, and severe alcoholism. He also held advisory positions, serving as chairman of a committee in the Nazi regime’s Expert Board for Population and Race Policy starting in 1933.
Rudin’s research program and political activities were guided by the idea of a “healthy race,” and he supported the Nazi state’s efforts to implement his “thirty-year-old dream.” He actively supported the killing of children and mental patients under the Nazi program euphemistically referred to as “euthanasia” in the early 1940s. Rudin’s department received financial and manpower support from the Nazi government after 1933, as Nazi health policy sought a scientific basis to justify its actions, aligning with Rudin’s ideas.
A Controversial Legacy
Ernst Rudin’s post-war assessment has been marked by ethical condemnation due to his deep involvement in Nazi atrocities. His scientific contributions became inextricably linked with the eugenic crimes of the Third Reich. While credited as a pioneer of psychiatric inheritance studies, he also actively argued for, designed, justified, and funded the mass sterilization and clinical killing of adults and children.
Debates surrounding his de-Nazification process and the broader implications for the ethics of science and medicine continue. Some later accounts have been criticized for downplaying or omitting his active participation in these programs, while others explicitly document his support for horrific acts. Rudin received numerous awards during the Nazi era, including the Goethe Medal of Arts and Sciences in 1939, personally handed to him by Hitler, who hailed him as a “pioneer of the racial-hygienic measures of the Third Reich.”
In 1944, Rudin was awarded the “Eagle Shield of the German Reich” medal by Hitler, who praised him as a “pathfinder in the field of hereditary hygiene.” His legacy remains controversial, serving as a cautionary tale about the potential for scientific research to be perverted and used to justify inhumane policies. The connections of Rudin’s department to the Nazi regime were a main reason for the critical view towards psychiatric genetics in Germany after 1945.