Rana agarrada africana

The “race Aryan” is a concept of the European culture which had course of the end of the 19th century in the middle of the 20th century. It derives from the idea according to which the first people speaking the Indo-European Langues and their descendants until the modern time would have constituted a distinct race. In its most known application, the Nazisme, it was marked that the first Aryens resembled to the representatives of the Scandinavian people. The belief in the superiority of the “Aryan race” is sometimes named aryanism .

Etymology and drift of the concept

The expression “race Aryan” indicates in the beginning the race of the Aryens, former people of Ukraine of Indo-European language. Although the Aryan term indicates strictly speaking the Indo-iraniens, it could come from the Indo-European aryos (noble) and could be the auto- Ethnonyme of the original Indo-Europeans.

The expression then was largely used by the Nazi S, taking again the theories of classification and hierarchisation of the human races built in work such as those of the English Chamberlain or the French Vacher of Lapouge. These theorists of the Racisme affirmed the superiority of the “Scandinavian” types and of Anglo-Saxon civilizations and placed them at the top of a pyramid, whose base corresponded to the people of Black Africa.

The Nazis adopted this type of classification, in substituent however the Germans with the Anglo-Saxons. In parallel, the “human race” Aryan was regarded as higher than any other “race” and was to preserve or restore its purity. This ideology takes the name of aryanism. The scientists of this time used the expression “race Scandinavian”, in a context where the concept of human race was not yet abandoned.

The ideology Nazi and its terrible consequences largely contributed to discredit the concept of race and, a fortiori , the idea of classification of the races and the concepts of higher or lower races. However, the division of the mankind in supposed races to have different aptitudes, the concept of races lower and the assimilition of the race than the nation are of nothing creations of national-socialisme hitlérien. They are concepts which allowed and were recognized at the beginning of the 20th century, in Europe and America, independently of any political affiliation. The physical differences were studied scientifically by the Physical anthropology which was wrongfully covered with the same opprobrium as the racist ideologies, while at the same time it disqualified them.

History

The idea of a pure race, the Indo-European or Aryan race, whose Nazis claimed to seek the purity, is only one of the ultimate results of scientific theories of the 19th century century seeking to explain the social inequalities, or to found the legitimacy of the Colonialisme and the segregation by the question of the races, sanitarianism and the social Darwinism. The persecution of the Jews, the Tziganes and other minorities known as “lower”, founded by the Nazi Germany, as well as the rearmament and the military conquest of Europe, wanted to be justified by the need for ensuring the supremacy of alleged the " race aryenne" higher.

Linguistic base

They are the English linguists Jones and Young who discovered, in 1788 and 1813, a common relationship and roots between the Sanskrit, language of the social and religious elite of the India, and most of the European languages, of which the Germanic Langues, Romance, Celtic and Greek. One named then this linguistic group Indo-European Langues. Moreover, a branch of the Iranian people, known as Aryan , seems to have existed in Asia three millenia ago and to have conquered the India, where it would have imposed the language sanskrite and the system of the castes ( to see the theory of the Aryan invasion ). During the 19th century, some romantic invented an ethnic origin common to all these people to explain these similarities Linguistique S, without another base however that their inspiration. They baptized them Iranian name of “  aryens  ”, assigning points to them starting as varied as arbitrary (Syr Daria, Caspian Sea, the North Sea, North Africa, the Baltic, etc). These ideal imaginary people would have conquered a big part of the world, imposing his Langue and his Culture, for finally weakening and disappearing following the interbreeding with the conquered people. Some groups of “pure” individuals still would remain and form the elite of the mankind.

social Darwinism

In 1859, Charles Darwin published the Origin of the species , delivers in which he explained the mechanism of the Natural selection which allows, during environmental changes, with the individuals of an animal specie adapted to the new conditions of surviving and of procreating whereas the others are condemned not to have a descent. Little time ran out before Herbert Spencer, another contemporary English of Darwin, decided to apply the idea of selection of most suited the to the individuals and human society. Others followed such Arthur de Gobineau or Ernst Haeckel, founder of the Deutsche Monistbund (League German monist), which contributed to the development of the doctrines biologico-policy of the Nazis.

However, these new theories, which one called social Darwinisme, had only little to see with the theories of Darwin and raised of a bad interpretation of those. Indeed, Darwin does not define a priori the most adapted, the best from the point of view of the reproduction. He notes rather a posteriori that certain individuals, helped by their physical characteristics, have more descendants than others. He defines then these individuals as being best adapted. Indeed, to support such or such individual is not thus to note his superiority, it is on the contrary to deny it since the really higher individuals would not need than they are supported. But the original idea of survival of the adapted individuals was gradually transformed into survival of the higher individuals , for finally becoming domination higher individuals .

Racist use of these theories

Arthur de Gobineau (1816 - 1882) supported, in its Essai on the inequality of the human races of 1855, that the “  race  ” Indo-European supposed was the ancestor of all the leading classes of Europe and Asia of the West, and in particular of the French nobility from which it resulted.

Its work did not have, after all, that a retrospective and pessimistic character (Gobineau noted the manifest decline of the old leading classes, in the new more democratic context). It allured many mediums cultivated without causing nuisance with whoever. It should be said that at the time, the inequality of the human races appeared shown with many Europeans by the colonizing unification of the world, that the colonists of European origin seemed on the way to be able to complete, except in certain parts of the world such as the the Far East.

After Gobineau, the use of this Mythe had disastrous consequences. In 1871, Ludwig Geiger, Jewish German and wire of the Rabbin Abraham Geiger, put forward the idea that the Central Europe sheltered the hearth of the Aryan race. In 1878, Theodor Poesche allotted to the Aryens the characteristics of the Scandinavian populations. Between 1883 and 1891, Karl Penka popularized the image of Aryan fair with the blue eyes and the cranium lengthened, that Gerald Henry Rendall made known in England in 1889. In 1899, Houston Chamberlain, son-in-law of Wagner, supported in its Fondements of the 20th century that the higher race described by Gobineau had not ceased existing and that it remained in a pure state in Germany and Northern Europe. In this end of the 19th century, Germany had profited from a flowering large writer S, Philosophe S and Musicien S and had just made its unit with Versailles. It had just developed, following the England and of the France, one of the first heavy industries, while Bismarck had equipped the German workmen with the first system of modern Social Security.

However, of many Germans, nonglad to be legitimately proud and satisfied with these results, let themselves go to the Pangermanisme. Also they like a blessing accommodated the message of the Chamberlain English. More especially as during the war of 1914-1918, this one was made naturalize German. It was one of the principal inspirers of Hitler, which witnessed besides its funeral in 1927.

Aryan race and elected people

The idea of Aryan race was built in a context where the “Jewish question” was particularly acute in Europe: the reconstitution of the States on national bases during the 19th century created a problem for the ethnos groups dispersed in several states.

It is striking to note that the concept of “higher race” is inherited the concept of “elected people”: on the whole, the theorists of the Aryan race imitated and even caricatured the concept founder of the Jewish people and this, paradoxically, in a context of major Antisémitisme.

Within this framework, the Jewish people were an example of this kind of claim which had finished in historical failure. Its opposition to progress was odious with the occidentalized Jewish elites and the idea Zionist falls under the nationalist logic of the time with instruction and hygiene for the masses.

The paradox of alleged “the Aryan race” and other human races

It was noted higher than the existence of such a race, doubtful and without scientific base, was opposed to the simple good sense. Indeed, to apply in a coherent way the legislation Nazi, it had been necessary, have regard for the concept of “races”, to separate those which had in particular fair hair, blue eyes and a right nose, those which had brown hair, busqués noses, brown eyes, etc Or much of not-Jews, even of the members of the party, belonged to the second group. According to a joke in vogue, pure “the   Aryen  ” should have been “  fair like Hitler, slender like Goering, and beautiful like Goebbels   ”. On another side, a considerable proportion of German Jews were fair with the blue eyes.

After in particular Georges Cowherd of Lapouge, some “  scientifiques  ” Nazis claimed to identify the Aryan one while using like criterion of the particular proportions of cranium. There still, the craniums of the Jews could be dolichocéphales, brachycephalic persons or Mésocéphale S and did not present more homogeneity than craniums of the not-Jews.

The laws hitlériennes thus stipulated that one would be based on the religion of the large parents and not on physical criteria such as the cephalic Indice to determine the membership of a “  race  ”  : it was decided that those which had Christian grandparents were famous of “  race  ” Aryan. As for those of which 3 of the four grandparents were Jewish, they were famous of “  race  ” Jewish and treated consequently.

Very close criteria were taken again by the laws petainists of October 1940, with unexpected effects: the French of the Antilles, of African origin, were not issued of it “Aryan”.

Extracts of Mein Kampf , Adolf Hitler, 1927

“  The Jew remains at the place where it was established and studs itself there, so much so that one can only drive out some very with difficulty, even by employing violence. He is and remains the standard parasite, the cadger who, a such harmful bacillus, extends always more far from that a favorable feeder ground there the invite.  ”

“  The effect produced by its presence is that of the parasitic plants: where it is fixed, the people which accommodate it éteint.  ”

In connection with “  The vital Space   ”  :

“  To arrive a pure race it is necessary especially that a State subjects colonization to strict rules. Commissions of race, especially made up, will have to deliver with the individuals a license of colonisation : the condition posed with the attribution of this license will be a purity of given race of which it will be necessary to give the evidence. Thus could be founded marginal colonies whose colonists will be exclusively representatives of the purest race. It is not in an orientation sometimes in the West or the East that the future of our foreign policy is, but well in a policy of the East, in the direction of the acquisition of the ground necessary to our German people… We carry our glances towards the Eastern European countries, if we speak today about new grounds in Europe, we could think initially only of Russia and the countries bordering which depend on it. The gigantic State of the East is ripe for collapse. And the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will be the end of Russia as a State. We were elected by the destiny to attend a catastrophe, which will be the most solid proof of the accuracy of the racist theories about the races humaines.  ”

The concept of higher race today

See also: human Race

At the origin of the theory of the races, a conflict opposes the partisans of the existence of a single human race (Monogénisme), particulèrement the philosopher Kant and the anthropologist and biologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and holding them of a diversity of the human races (Polygénisme), which it is of the philosopher and naturalist Christoph Meiners or about the physicist and biologist Samuel Thomas Sömmerring.

Progress of research and the major weight of the genetics made infinitely vaguer the concept of Race, in particular for the mankind. Besides one confuses often the concept of race with that of Ethnie.

Some tried scientifically to define races within the mankind, in particular by considering the structure genetics of the populations. However, the races thus defined miss relevance, and their use as biological units is rejected by the scientists.

Survival of the concept

The concept of " race aryenne" is given up today, just like that of " race" concerning the mankind. It continues to be used by extremists groups claiming superiority of some " races" (Bonehead, néonazis, Ku Klux Klan, Hitlérisme, etc).

See too

References