After the fact: "Jews" in post-1945 German physical anthropology

This chapter focuses on discourse about “Jews” in writings by German physical anthropologists between the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the beginning of the 1990s. Physical anthropology is arguably the discipline most strongly associated with the idea of race. 1 A basic tension can be discerned that pertains to two aspects of the wider history of German physical anthropology. First, physical anthropology was (and still is) a field not only intimately associated with scientific writing on race but is practically founded on the concept of race; and, second, the discussion of Jews as a racial group was integral to the science of physical anthropology before 1945 but taboo in Germany after that date. It is important, however, for comprehension of the bigger picture, to point out that after 1945 this scientific discipline no longer fed into public discourse in the political sphere, and particularly in the context of a discussion of discursive representations of “the Jew,” that there was virtually a complete separation between the figure of the “Jew” and the individuals who identify themselves or who identify as Jewish.