NEW PRIMARY-SOURCE EVIDENCE: BECKER EXPLICITLY LINKED MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY RESEARCH TO “PRACTICAL RACI
I didn't expect to post an update less than a day after the last. But this is an update I needed to make. In the last update, I deliberately drew a line between what the evidence established and what remained uncertain.
This morning, I received another primary source, I was not expecting what it contained. It is a report of research presented by Becker in November 1938, specifically concerning the inheritance of muscular dystrophy. In Becker's discussion of that research, he explicitly described it as having:
*praktischer rassenhygienischer Bedeutung“
— “practical racial-hygienic significance.”
The document
The research was published in Klinische Wochenschrift in April 1939 under the title: P. E. Becker: „Erbbiologische Fragen bei der Muskeldystrophie“
“Hereditary-biological questions in muscular dystrophy.”
However, the it had originally been presented at the Freiburg Medical Society on 22 November 1938. The context of that meeting is important. The report states:
„Die Sitzung findet gemeinsam mit der Freiburger Rassenhygienischen Gesellschaft statt.“
“The meeting is being held jointly with the Freiburg Society for Racial Hygiene.”
Becker then presented his research of a large family affected by progressive muscular dystrophy.
Becker writes that the family comprised of 260 individuals. He says that, with only a few exceptions, all living members of the family were examined, including people who had married into it. Thirty-five people were identified as carrying the trait. Becker investigated differences in the severity and onset of muscular dystrophy throughout this family, including differences between men and women, similarities between siblings, body type and other inherited physical characteristics. The purpose was to understand why the same inherited condition could appear very differently between members of the same family.Then, towards the end of his presentation, Becker explains why he believed this research mattered. He wrote:
"Die Erforschung der Ursachen der Variabilität innerhalb einer Sippe, wie sie hier versucht wurde, ist, wenn es sich um ein krankhaftes Merkmal handelt, nicht nur von theoretischer, sondern auch von praktischer rassenhygienischer Bedeutung.“
English translation is:
“Research into the causes of variability within a kindred, as attempted here, is, when dealing with a pathological trait, not only of theoretical but also of practical racial-hygienic significance.” This sentence is extremely important to my investigation.
Until now, one of the strongest documents I had uncovered was a University of Freiburg personnel record from 22 November 1939. That document described Becker as:
"fachausgebildeter Erbbiologe“
— a professionally trained hereditary biologist —
who:
"Die Erb- und rassenhygienischen Forschungsaufgaben an der Klinik wissenschaftlich betreibt.“
— was specifically engaged in the clinic's research work in hereditary biology and racial hygiene.
I was careful about interpreting that document because those were the words of the University of Freiburg describing Becker.
This new source is different. These are Becker's own scientific words. And they concern muscular dystrophy itself. This closes an important evidential gap Until now, the evidence established that Becker was involved in hereditary research and that Freiburg described him as conducting hereditary and racial-hygiene research. Separately, we knew that Becker was researching muscular dystrophy.
What I did not want to do was simply assume that Becker's muscular dystrophy research was itself connected to racial hygiene. This document means I no longer have to make that assumption. Becker made the connection himself.
For someone living with muscular dystrophy today, this has been profoundly uncomfortable to read.
But there are still limits to what this proves
As disturbing as I find this document, I want to maintain the same standard I have used throughout this investigation. This document does not show Becker advocating the killing of people with muscular dystrophy. It does not establish that he participated in Aktion T4. It does not demonstrate that the members of this particular family were sterilised or otherwise persecuted.
And crucially, Becker does not explain in these two pages exactly what practical racial-hygienic measures he believed should follow from his research.
That question now requires further investigation. I will not fill that gap with speculation.
But there is an important distinction between saying that we do not yet know what practical racial-hygienic application Becker thought of and claiming that Becker never connected his muscular dystrophy research with racial hygiene. The latter position is no longer compatible with this primary source.
Why this has affected me
I want to depart briefly from the scientific language because this campaign is deeply personal. I have Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
During this investigation I have tried very hard not to approach Becker as someone whose guilt I needed to prove.
In fact, as more documents arrived, I had begun to wonder whether the investigation might ultimately exonerate him from some of the allegations that have surrounded his Nazi era career.
Some evidence has genuinely pointed away from the strongest allegations.I have found no evidence that Becker participated in Aktion T4.
A 1939 hereditary-health assessment I examined actually ended with Becker approving the man's marriage and prospective offspring rather than recommending that his reproduction should be prevented.
I have published those findings because this campaign has to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
That is why reading this document this morning was difficult. This isn't someone else describing Becker as a racial hygienist. It isn't guilt by association with another scientist. It isn't an inference based simply upon his membership of Nazi organisations.
It is Peter Emil Becker himself discussing hereditary muscular dystrophy and stating that the research had “practical racial-hygienic significance.”
Reading those words about the condition that has affected me all my life is difficult to separate from the history I am investigating.
What happens next
One particularly important question is now what Becker meant by “practical racial-hygienic significance.”
I am also trying to locate Becker's surviving original research material, correspondence, family pedigrees, research notes, case material and other unpublished records, which may tell us considerably more about how this work was conducted and how Becker believed it should be applied.
The family described in this 1938 research is itself now an important historical lead.
But I will apply the same rule to whatever comes next: If the evidence exonerates Becker from an allegation, I will publish it. If the evidence implicates him more deeply, I will publish that too.
This campaign began with a simple question about whether Peter Emil Becker is an appropriate person for a muscular-dystrophy diagnosis to commemorate.
The historical evidence is now giving us a much clearer picture of what Becker himself said about muscular dystrophy during the Nazi period.
People affected by muscular dystrophy deserve to know that history.