CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Farkas, Tamas |
|---|---|
| Title | Eugenics: The building of society and the nation in fin de siecle and interwar Hungary |
| Summary | My thesis discusses the development of Hungarian eugenic movement in fin de siècle and the reflections to some eugenic measures published in leading daily newspapers during the 1930. I will draw the intellectual background of eugenic which was the intersection of racial thinking, Social Darwinism and local nationalism. I will show how the early Hungarian eugenicists conceptualized their social reforms in a racial framework and what were the main elements of their racial hygienic programs. I will show that in their argumentation society and nation have the same kind of biological connotations since both entity were seen as a biological organism which development can be altered by state-controlled medical interventions. Then I will examine the long term effect of fin de siècle eugenics in a short discourse analysis on the reflections to proposed eugenic measures published in Hungarian newspapers. I will argue that apart from some radically anti-Semitic utterances most of the leading Hungarian doctors and psychiatrist were at least hesitant in overtly backing eugenic measures (namely sterilization). |
| Supervisor | Kovács Mária |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/farkas_tamas.pdf |
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