Talk:Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer

Auschwitz Clarifications Needed
The article states that Verschuer was "approved to work at Auschwitz" by Himmler. This is ambiguous; did he ever go there, or not? Or is this a way of referring to his assitant, Mengele, who certainly was there. Clarification and citation needed.

Twice, the article refers to the horror of removing eyes from prisoners while the prisoners were still alive. Was this Verschuer's idea, or Mengele's? Also, what was the supposed reasoning behind doing this, rather that the standard post-mortem taking of body parts? I would guess to have fresh specimens, but a definite citation would improve the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.146.141.240 (talk) 19:56, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

From Gerald Posner's Hitler's Children
[Verschuer] encouraged [Mengele] to work in a concentration camp, holding out the inducement that such an assignment was in the interest of science. As wartime director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Hereditary Teaching and Eugenics in Berlin, Verschuer secured funds for Mengele’s concentration-camp experiments. In turn, Mengele sent him his lab results, skeletons and body parts, wrapped in thick brown paper and marked “Urgent – War Materiel.” After the war, Verschuer returned to teaching while Mengele was a fugitive for his crimes. Although that does not engender any sympathy for his father, it still angers Rolf: “I am not happy that the man who sent my father to Auschwitz, the man who gave the order to go there and conduct the studies, was never punished. For those who were behind desks during the war, in my view, it was easier than if they were there. At the minimum, Verschuer had a moral responsibility.” 105.226.83.65 (talk) 10:34, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

Untitled
A few points that I have changed. -"Nazi" is not a nationality. It seems to be standard to mention a person's nationality in the first sentence, so I have changed it to "German". -Mengele was probably infamous, but that is probably not encyclopedic language. -What is "[sic]" about "collected eyes of different colour"? -Minor language and typo corrections.
 * The [sic] was because of the British use of "colour" but I suppose it doesn't matter; I'm perfectly happy with the other changes. I think it is important to emphasize his ties with the Nazi regime but the added heading does that at least as well and without any style issues, so bravo. --Fastfission 15:54, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)
 * I am not sure about the correction, is it about the preferred spelling of the word color (American English) or colour (British English)? I would like to think this is not the case. As for history, what was studied was the eyes of people with different coloured irises. Publications can be examined if there is a question about this. As for replacing 'Nazi' by 'German', I appreciate the change as it is fully correct and justified. Later on in the article it is pointed out that Verschuer had joined the Nazi party (NSDAP). Virago250 (talk) 15:34, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, by Hans Walter Schmuhl. Infringing material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.) For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. Moonriddengirl (talk) 11:56, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

smoking and lung cancer
Some mention should be made of his involvement in research relating lung cancer to smoking (which did mesh well with the Nazi health ethos, and predated by some decades such recognition in the countries which won the war). Vershuer is mentioned en passant in this paper: "When genius errs - R.A.Fisher and the lung cancer controversy" (Stolley 1991, Am. J. Epidemiology 133(5):41-425), but there would be much more direct citations that could be used. 120.18.198.69 (talk) 06:54, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Omissions
There is some material that is currently omitted from the article and could serve to expand it.


 * His article on the German wiki mentions von Verschuer's educational background, his military service in World War I, and was involved in the Kapp Putsch
 * The article already mentions that part of the experiments on humans focused on people with "slightly unequal eyes". The German wiki specifically mentions that the "Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science sponsored research for iris heterochromia". The nature are the results of the research should be mentioned.
 * The German article mentions that von Verschuer was the author of 290 publications, ranging from journal articles to full books such "Eugenics: Future generations in the view of genetics" (German: "Eugenik. Kommende Generationen in der Sicht der Genetik", 1966). A mention of at least some of them could demonstrate that this man was a prolific author.
 * The English article mentions as an afterthought the circumstances of his death. Shouldn't we actually cover the cause of death in some detail? Dimadick (talk) 12:41, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Daily Mail reference
This is not an ideal reference. The story in the Mail is about the book Taeterinnen: Frauen I'm Nationalsozialismus. I shall try to add the material about Magnussen directly from that book instead, unless someone else has time to do it. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:21, 5 March 2014 (UTC)