Rudolf Virchow: Sämtliche Werke

This volume brings together a number of texts and unpublished letters concerning “racial issues”, a topic which became fashionable in later 19th-century scholarship with far-reaching consequences. Rudolf Virchow dealt thoroughly with this topic. But a literature of inexact popular science also enjoyed great success. For example, in 1871 the French zoologist and comparative anatomist Armand de Quatrefages published his essay “La race prussienne”, a confused hotchpotch of scientific inaccuracies; its basic thesis was that the Prussians were actually a “race” of dark-haired Finns, so that the concept of the “racial” unity of the blond, Teutonic “Germans” was an error. The reaction among German scholars was immense. Rudolf Virchow, who had long been studying the racial theories of brachycephaly and doliocephaly, reacted swiftly in a number of lectures which demolished his famous French colleague’s pamphlet piece by piece. Going far beyond a mere refutation, Virchow examined the ancient and modern Germans in his most extensive published study on this theme, “Beiträge zur physischen Anthropologie der Deutschen, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Friesen”, reprinted here for the first time in 130 years. The value of this work is enhanced by an editor’s introduction on the history of research and by comprehensive indexes.