Rejection of “Racial Hygiene”


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Marga Meusel believed that the “Law Preventing the Transmission of Hereditary Disease” of July 14, 1933, which provided for forced sterilization, brought Christians in moral conflicts. She wrote about this to Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, director of the Bethel institutions in Bethel, on October 16, 1934. Two months later, he passed her appeal along to Werner Villinger, chief of medicine at the institutions and a staunch advocate of forced sterilization. He was supposed to speak with Meusel personally in Berlin. Although she made every effort, a meeting between them never took place.


Meusel continued to raise her admonitory voice nonetheless. In 1935, she expressed her view in an article on work with “people with heritable disorders”, which the National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) had left to charitable organizations. She critically asked, Is there “life unworthy of living” before God?


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