Gustav Theodor Fritsch
(1838-1927) Das Haupthaar und seine Bildungsstaette bei den Rassen des Menschen (Hair and the Location of its Production in the Human Races), Berlin 1912, panel XV: "Chinese, Javanese, Japanese, Australian" Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek? Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek
The human races represented by five characteristic heads Ca. 1920 (?), Pasteboard panel used for instruction in schools; pasteboard, wood Dortmund, Westfälisches Schulmuseum
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These are the thumbnails and texts for this alcove.
They can be printed.
"The local doesn«t know the foreigner, but he recognizes a stranger at first sight." (Karl Valentin)
Typologies help us to order the world and to find our place in it. They make it easy to differentiate what is ours from what is foreign, and so contribute to the development of our individual and collective identity. However, typologies can become inflexible principles of order that keep us from looking at things in other ways.
Scientists have repeatedly tried to systematize human beings by making comparisons. Since the end of the 18th century, these scientists have primarily used measurable, external physical characteristics, like skin color, hair, or the form of the skull. Today, we have serious doubts whether a classification like this is at all tenable. This typology is particularly questionable since it was, and often still is, frequently associated with the idea that you can draw conclusions about moral and social values by examining physical characteristics.
Representations of "racial types" are widely used even today. Encyclopedias that popularize scientific findings, school books and children's books, games, and also the advertising and entertainment industries, continue to fill our minds with stereotyped images of foreigners.
Scientists tried to determine differences by comparing the form and structure of hair, and thereby support their theories of race. External differences among human beings were examined down to microscopic structures. It was impossible to verify the analysis with the naked eye, so lay people were simply forced to accept the results of the research on faith. |
