Johann Mendel

Effects of Heredity and Environment on Race Formation

Published by carolyn on Thu, 2019-09-05 21:58

From the Handbook for Schooling the Hitler Youth

Chapter Three: Race Formation (Handbook online is here)

Now we ask ourselves, what really constitutes a race and how does nature produce such races. We say that groups of individuals with the same heredity will continually produce their kind. We can also say that  individuals without the same heredity will produce descendants unlike the parents. What laws govern here?

The study of heredity is based on the laws which Johann Mendel (pictured above with pea plants)  established after his experiments with species of sweet peas, beans, and hawkweed, which he published in 1865 and 1869. Mendel was an Austrian German whose parents were too poor to send him to university but, because of his recognized mental gifts, were able to enter him into an Augustinian cloister from where he was sent to the University of Vienna. He studied natural science, becoming a teacher, which gave him the opportunity for carrying out his experiments in cross-breeding. Mendel is sometimes called the Father of Genetics.