‘A New Religion’? Eugenics and Racial Scientism in Pre‐First World War Hungary

Abstract

This article discusses developments in eugenic thinking which animated Hungarian scientific community before the First World War. One case in particular is relevant in this context: the 1911 debate on racial improvement and heredity. The debate marked a major turning point in the evolution of eugenics and the emergence of racial scientism in Hungary. Both discourses were formulated as totalising responses to a number of scientific topics, like heredity, but also to practical social and medical problems such as degeneration, sterilisation and marriage counselling. The debate thus has a double significance: on the one hand, it gave supporters of eugenics in Hungary the necessary opportunity to articulate common programmes of hygiene and racial hygiene; whilst on the other, it introduced a scientific ethos into the general discussion on social and political transformation that characterised Hungarian political thinking in early twentieth century.