Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 March 2008
Eager to move on after the divisive Sonderweg debates of the 1980s, historians of modern Germany have been busily elaborating a new central narrative around the notion of biopolitics. Aimed at producing a more powerful and productive society by regulating, optimizing, and even exterminating specific human populations, biopolitics has encompassed everything from housing reform, anti-smoking campaigns, and child vaccination programs to pro- and anti-natalist tax policies, national census taking, and the science of industrial hygiene. Identified by Michel Foucault and others as a general feature of all Western modernities, biopolitics has been a particularly fruitful concept for German historians, who have used it to trace the evolution of racial hygiene—the Nazi variant of eugenics and Germany's most infamous application of biopolitical principles—from a politically diverse group of Wilhelmine and Weimar social reformers. The very normality of these reformers, given the international context, has in turn allowed scholars to avoid labeling German modernity as deviant while at the same time framing the murderous dynamic of the Nazi years as a potential latent in modernity more generally. As Edward Ross Dickinson put it in an excellent review article recently, Germany has emerged from this reevaluation “not as a nation having trouble modernizing, but as a nation of troubling modernity.”
1 Dickinson, Edward Ross, “Biopolitics, Fascism, Democracy: Some Reflections on Our Discourse About ‘Modernity,’” Central European History 37 (2004): 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The classic statement on biopolitics by Foucault, Michel is “Right of Death and Power Over Life,” in The History of Sexuality: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 136–140Google Scholar.
2 For a similar critique, see also the introduction of Eley, Geoff and Retallack, James, eds., Wilhelminism and Its Legacies: German Modernities, Imperialism, and the Meanings of Reform, 1890–1930 (New York: Berghahn, 2003)Google Scholar.
3 By tracing lines of continuity across the twentieth century and through so many political permutations, my approach also has much in common with the route recommended in Geyer, Michael and Jarausch, Konrad, Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
4 For suggestive links on Rubner and body history, see Rabinbach, Anson, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992)Google Scholar. The best biographical sketches are Sabine Wildt, , “Bemerkungen zu Max Rubners Tätigkeit als Ordinarius f. Hygiene an der Berliner Universität (1891–1908),” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe 28 (1979): 301–307Google Scholar; and Fick, R., “Gedächtnisrede,” Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1932): CXXVIII–CXLVIGoogle Scholar. Fick's article also has an excellent bibliography. In English, see Rothschuh, K. E., “Rubner, Max,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. XI, ed. Gillespie, Charles (New York: Scribner, 1970), 585–586Google Scholar. The few existing histories of modern nutrition science barely mention Rubner. See, for instance, Carpenter, Kenneth, Protein and Energy: A Study of Changing Ideas in Nutrition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.
5 Rubner, Max, “Die Vertretungswerthe der hauptsächlichsten organischen Nahrungsstoffe im Thierkörper,” Zeitschrift für Biologie 19 (1883): 313–396Google Scholar. For an overview of the Munich physiologists, see Holmes, Frederic L., “The Formation of the Munich School of Metabolism,” in The Investigative Enterprise: Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Medicine, ed. Coleman, William and Holmes, Frederic L. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 179–210Google Scholar.
6 The standard values for a mixed diet (meat and vegetable) are as follows: 1 gram protein=4.1 calories, 1 gram fat=9.3 calories, 1 gram carbohydrates=4.1 calories. This work was summarized in Rubner, Max, Gesetze des Energieverbrauchs bei der Ernährung (Leipzig: F. Deuticke, 1902)Google Scholar and translated as The Laws of Energy Consumption in Nutrition (Natick, MA: U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, 1968).
7 Fick, “Gedächtnisrede,” CXXXI–CXXXII. Lusk, Graham, “Contributions to the Science of Nutrition,” Science 72 (August 12, 1932): 132Google Scholar. Levenstein, Harvey, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 72–85Google Scholar.
8 Rabinbach, The Human Motor, 124–129. Also useful on the industrialization of the human body are the essays in Sarasin, Philipp and Tanner, Jakob, eds., Physiologie und industrielle Gesellschaft. Studien zur Verwissenschaftlichung des Körpers im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1998)Google Scholar.
9 Steudel, Hermann, “Max Rubner,” Forschungen und Fortschritte 8 (May 20, 1932): 203Google Scholar. Wildt, Bemerkungen, 304.
10 Wildt, Bemerkungen, 302 and 304.
11 Rubner, Max, Ueber Volksgesundheitspflege und medizinlose Heilkunde (Berlin: A. Hirschwald, 1899)Google Scholar; and Unsere Nahrungsmittel und die Ernährungskunde (Stuttgart: Moritz, 1904), which was volume 20 of the popular health series Bibliothek der Gesundheitspflege.
12 Rubner, Max, “Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die modernen Bekleidungssyteme,” Archiv für Hygiene 29 (1897): 269–303Google Scholar; 31 (1897): 142–215; and 32 (1898): 1–132. Rubner, Max and Heubner, O., “Die künstliche Ernährung eines normalen und eines atrophischen Säuglings,” Zeitschrift für Biologie 36 (1898): 315–398Google Scholar. Rubner, Max, Beiträge zur Ernährung im Knabenalter mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Fettsucht (Berlin: Hirschwald, 1902)Google Scholar. Rubner, Max, Das Problem der Lebensdauer und seine Beziehungen zu Wachstum und Ernährung (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1908)Google Scholar.
13 Wildt, Bemerkungen, 305.
14 Steudel, “Max Rubner,” 203–204.
15 Rubner, Max, Wandlungen in der Volksernährung (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1913), 102Google Scholar.
16 For Rubner, an “average” worker was an adult male weighing seventy kilograms. When engaged in moderate physical labor, this worker required a daily intake of approximately 3,100 calories and 30 to 118 grams of protein to maintain physical health. In proposing that the daily protein minimum might be as low as 30 grams, Rubner broke with scientific consensus, which set the minimum at 118 grams. Dietary reformers such as Mikkel Hindhede and Russell Chittenden had persuaded him to abandon this benchmark, at least in principle. In practice, he continued to waffle on what the minimum actually was for the rest of his career. Rubner, Max, Volksernährungsfragen (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1908), 37–41 and 69Google Scholar. Rubner, Wandlungen, 71. For the controversy over the true protein minimum, see Carpenter, Protein and Energy.
17 To make matters worse, Rubner warned, rising meat prices were driving up sandwich costs, a development sure to depress workers' nutritional and economic state even further. Rubner, Wandlungen, 101–104.
18 Rubner, Volksernärhungsfragen, 99–103.
19 Rubner, Wandlungen, 117. Rubner was prescient in identifying street foods as a new and potentially threatening feature of the urban landscape. The problem was not rediscovered until the late 1980s, when the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations made it a focus of inquiry. See Street Foods: Report of an FAO Technical Meeting on Street Foods, Calcutta, India, 6–9 November 1995. FAO Food and Nutrition Paper 63 (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1997), 2.
20 Rubner, Wandlungen, 3. Rubner, Volksernährungsfragen, 52–53.
21 Teuteberg, Hans-Jürgen, “Wie ernährten sich Arbeiter im Kaiserreich?,” in Arbeiterexistenz im 19. Jahrhundert. Lebensstandard und Lebensgestaltung deutscher Arbeiter und Handwerker, ed. Conze, Werner and Engelhardt, Ulrich (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1981), 57–73Google Scholar.
22 Koolmees, Peter, “Meat in the Past: A Bird's Eye View on Meat Consumption, Production, and Research,” Meat Past and Present: Research, Production, Consumption, ed. Sybesma, W., Koolmees, P. A., and van der Heij, D. G. (Zeist, Netherlands: TNO Nutrition and Food Research Institute, 1994), 7, 9, 15, and 20Google Scholar.
23 Teuteberg, Hans J., “Der Verzehr von Nahrungsmitteln in Deutschland pro Kopf und Jahr seit Beginn der Industrialisierung (1850–1975). Versuch einer quantitativen Langzeitanalyse,” in Unsere tägliche Kost. Geschichte und regionale Prägung, ed. Teuteberg, Hans J. and Wiegelman, Günter (Münster: F. Coppenrath Verlag, 1986), 66–69Google Scholar.
24 Rubner, Wandlungen, 107.
25 Teuteberg, “Der Verzehr von Nahrungsmitteln,” 252, 267, and 275. Nonn, Christoph, “Fleischvermarktung im Deutschland im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1996), 55 and 62–64Google Scholar.
26 Rubner, Wandlungen, 61–68.
27 Brock, William H., Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 215–249Google Scholar.
28 Voit, Carl, “Ueber die Kost in öffentlichen Anstalten,” Zeitschrift für Biologie 12 (1876): 1–59Google Scholar. Voit, Carl, “Physiologie des allgemeines Stoffwechsels und der Ernährung,” Handbuch der Physiologie, vol. 6, ed. Hermann, L. (Leipzig: Vogel, 1881)Google Scholar. For the institutional application of the “new nutrition,” see Thoms, Ulrike, Anstaltskost im Rationalisierungsprozess. Die Ernährung in Krankenhäusern und Gefängnissen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005)Google Scholar.
29 Voit, for instance, reinforced “meat makes meat” by emphasizing meat as the essential element “in a rational normal diet” (zu einer rationallen mittleren Kost). Quoted in Rubner, Volksernährungsfragen, 86.
30 Ibid., 112.
31 Rubner, Wandlungen, 113.
32 Rubner's attack on the irrationality of the urban diet focused on meat but did acknowledge other factors, particularly alcohol consumption. See, for instance, Rubner, Volksernährungsfragen, 120.
33 On Volksernährung, see Teuteberg, Hans J., “Studien zur Volksernährung unter sozial- und wirtschaftsgeschichtlichen Aspekten,” in Teuteberg, H. J. and Wiegelmann, G., Der Wandel der Nahrungsgewohnheiten unter dem Einfluß der Industrialisierung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 44–49Google Scholar. On food riots, see Gailus, Manfred, “Food Riots in Germany in the Late 1840s,” Past and Present 145 (November 1994): 157–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Der Kampf um das tägliche Brot. Nahrungsmangel, Versorgungspolitik und Protest, 1770–1990, ed. Manfred Gailus and Heinrich Volkmann (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1994).
34 Kamminga, Harmke, “Nutrition for the People, or the Fate of Jacob Moleschott's Contest for a Humanist Science,” The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840–1940, ed. Kamminga, Harmke and Cunningham, Andrew (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), 15–47Google Scholar.
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38 Rowntree, B. Seebohm, Poverty: A Study of Town Life (London: Macmillan, 1901)Google Scholar.
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42 Rubner, Volksernährungsfragen, 54–57, 88–89, and 103–106.
43 On a daily basis, Rubner estimated, a sedentary adult German male of seventy kilos required about 2,400 calories; one engaged in moderately active work required about 3,100; and one performing hard physical labor required anywhere from 3,800 to 4,500. Ibid., 58, 69, and 90–92.
44 Ibid., 3, 60–61, and 99–101.
45 Ibid., 48 and 50–52.
46 Rubner, Wandlungen, 26–27.
47 Rubner, Volksernährungsfragen, 137.
48 Ibid., 142–143.
49 Rubner, Wandlungen, 4. Rubner, Max, “The Nutrition of the People,” in Transactions of the Fifteenth International Congress on Hygiene and Demography, Washington, D.C., September 23–28, 1912, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1913), 393Google Scholar.
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52 “Would Limit Beer Drinking,” The Washington Post (September 21, 1912), 6.
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54 See, for instance, Lafontaine, Henri and Otlet, Paul, “La vie internationale et l'effort pour son organisation,” in La Vie Internationale, Vol. I (Brussels: n.p., 1912), 14Google Scholar.
55 Between 1840 and 1914, at least 3,000 international gatherings took place, and more than 450 non-governmental as well as more than thirty governmental organizations with an international profile emerged. Lyons, F. S. L., Internationalism in Europe 1815–1914 (Leyden: A. W. Sythoff, 1963), 11–14Google Scholar.
56 Eijkman, P. H., L'Internationalisme Scientifique (La Haye: Bureau Préliminaire de la Fondation pour L'Internationalisme, 1911), appendix (unnumbered page)Google Scholar. The group underwent several name changes before finally settling on “International Congress of Hygiene and Demography.” The group considered public health in its broadest aspect, with regular sections on the health of infants and school-age children, the control of epidemics and infectious diseases, military and colonial medicine, and the hygiene of living quarters, transport, and public buildings.
57 Lyons, Internationalism, 229. This was a forerunner of the Codex alimentarius, set up by WHO and FAO in the early 1960s to develop international food standards. See Goodman, Neville M., International Health Organizations and Their Work, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone, 1971), 291–293Google Scholar.
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59 Schröder-Gudehus, Brigitte, Deutsche Wissenschaft und Internationale Zusammenarbeit 1914–1928. Ein Beitrag zum Studium kultureller Beziehungen in politischen Krisenzeiten (Geneva: Dumaret & Golay, 1966), 49Google Scholar.
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61 Max Rubner, “Deutschlands Ernährung im Krieg, Vortrag im Reichstag 17.12.1914,” Max Planck Gesellschaft-Archiv (MPG-Archiv), III. Abt., Rep. 8, Nr. 134–6.
62 Aereboe, Friedrich, Ballod, Karl, Beyschlag, Franz, Caspari, Wilhlem, Eltzbacher, Paul, Heyl, Hedwig, Krusch, Paul, Kuczynski, Robert, Lehmann, Kurt, Lemmermann, Otto, Oppenheimer, Karl, Rubner, Max, von Rümker, Kurt, Tacke, Bruno, Warmbold, Hermann, and Zuntz, Nathan, Die deutsche Volksernährung und der englische Aushungerungsplan. Eine Denkschrift, ed. Eltzbacher, Paul (Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, 1914), 158–196CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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73 The Starving of Germany (Berlin: L. Schumacher, 1919), 3–7.
74 Offer, The First World War, 24, 34, 48, 51, and 53. Although Offer's book has been widely praised, he makes many factual mistakes in his discussion of Rubner. He claims on pages 43–44, for instance, that Rubner was an ardent defender of the traditional high-protein, high-meat diet. In fact, Rubner had clearly rejected this view by 1908 and, indeed, criticized the traditional diet loudly and persistently throughout the war.
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