Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (German: [ɛʁnst ˈhɛkl̩]; 16 February 1834 – 9 August 1919)[1] was a German zoologist, naturalist, eugenicist, philosopher, physician, professor, marine biologist and artist. He discovered, described and named thousands of new species, mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms and coined many terms in biology, including ecology,[2] phylum,[3] phylogeny,[4] and Protista.[5] Haeckel promoted and popularised Charles Darwin's work in Germany[6] and developed the influential but no longer widely held recapitulation theory ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") claiming that an individual organism's biological development, or ontogeny, parallels and summarises its species' evolutionary development, or phylogeny.
"Haeckel" redirects here. For other uses, see Haeckel (disambiguation).
Ernst Haeckel
9 August 1919 (aged 85)
Recapitulation theory
Anna Sethe, Agnes Huschke
- Linnean Medal (1894)
- Darwin–Wallace Medal (Silver, 1908)
- Zoology
- Natural History
- Eugenics
- Philosophy
- Marine Biology
Haeckel
Haeckel
The published artwork of Haeckel includes over 100 detailed, multi-colour illustrations of animals and sea creatures, collected in his Kunstformen der Natur ("Art Forms of Nature"), a book which would go on to influence the Art Nouveau artistic movement. As a philosopher, Ernst Haeckel wrote Die Welträthsel (1895–1899; in English: The Riddle of the Universe, 1900), the genesis for the term "world riddle" (Welträtsel); and Freedom in Science and Teaching[7] to support teaching evolution.
Haeckel was also a promoter of scientific racism[8] and embraced the idea of Social Darwinism.[6][9] He was the first person to characterize the Great War the "first" World War, which he did as early as 1914.
Awards and honors[edit]
Haeckel was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1885.[62] He was awarded the title of Excellency by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1907[63] and the Linnean Society of London's prestigious Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1908. In the United States, Mount Haeckel, a 13,418 ft (4,090 m) summit in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, overlooking the Evolution Basin, is named in his honour, as is another Mount Haeckel, a 2,941 m (9,649 ft) summit in New Zealand; and the asteroid 12323 Haeckel.[64][65]
In Jena he is remembered with a monument at Herrenberg (erected in 1969),[66] an exhibition at Ernst-Haeckel-Haus,[67] and at the Jena Phyletic Museum, which continues to teach about evolution and share his work to this day.[68]
The ratfish, Harriotta haeckeli is named in his honor.[69]
The research vessel Ernst Haeckel is named in his honor.[70]
In 1981, a botanical journal called Ernstia was started being published in the city of Maracay, Venezuela.[71]
In 2013, Ernstia, a genus of calcareous sponges in the family Clathrinidae. The genus was erected to contain five species previously assigned to Clathrina. The genus name honors Ernst Haeckel for his contributions towards sponge taxonomy and phylogeny.[72][73]
Assessments of potential influence on Nazism[edit]
Some historians have seen Haeckel's social Darwinism as a forerunner to Nazi ideology.[78][79][80] Others have denied the relationship altogether.[81][82][83]
The evidence is in some respects ambiguous. On one hand, Haeckel was an advocate of scientific racism. He held that evolutionary biology had definitively proven that races were unequal in intelligence and ability, and that their lives were also of unequal value, e.g., "These lower races (such as the Veddahs or Australian negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilised Europeans; we must therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives."[84] As a result of the "struggle for existence", it followed that the "lower" races would eventually be exterminated.[85] He was also a social Darwinist who believed that "survival of the fittest" was a natural law, and that struggle led to improvement of the race.[86] As an advocate of eugenics, he also believed that about 200,000 mentally and congenitally ill should be killed by a medical control board.[87] This idea was later put into practice by Nazi Germany, as part of the Aktion T4 program.[88] Alfred Ploetz, founder of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, praised Haeckel repeatedly, and invited him to become an honorary member. Haeckel accepted the invitation.[89] Haeckel also believed that Germany should be governed by an authoritarian political system, and that inequalities both within and between societies were an inevitable product of evolutionary law.[90] Haeckel was also an extreme German nationalist who believed strongly in the superiority of German culture.[91]
On the other hand, Haeckel was not an anti-Semite. In the racial hierarchies he constructed Jews tended to appear closer to the top, rather than closer to the bottom as in Nazi racial thought.[92] He was also a pacifist until the First World War, when he wrote propaganda in favor of the war.[93] The principal arguments of historians who deny a meaningful connection between Haeckel and Nazism are that Haeckel's ideas were very common at the time, that Nazis were much more strongly influenced by other thinkers, and that Haeckel is properly classified as a 19th-century German liberal, rather than a forerunner to Nazism.[94][95] They also point to incompatibilities between evolutionary biology and Nazi ideology.[96]
Nazis themselves divided on the question of whether Haeckel should be counted as a pioneer of their ideology. SS captain and biologist Heinz Brücher wrote a biography of Haeckel in 1936, in which he praised Haeckel as a "pioneer in biological state thinking".[97] This opinion was also shared by the scholarly journal, Der Biologe, which celebrated Haeckel's 100th birthday, in 1934, with several essays acclaiming him as a pioneering thinker of Nazism.[98] Other Nazis kept their distance from Haeckel. Nazi propaganda guidelines issued in 1935 listed books which popularized Darwin and evolution on an "expunged list". Haeckel was included by name as a forbidden author.[99] Gunther Hecht, a member of the Nazi Department of Race Politics, also issued a memorandum rejecting Haeckel as a forerunner of Nazism.[100] Kurt Hildebrandt, a Nazi political philosopher, also rejected Haeckel.[100] Eventually Haeckel was rejected by Nazi bureaucrats.[101]
