“Das Hirngewicht der Juden,” Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden 1, no. 3 (1905): 5–10.
Richard Weinberg was a privatdocent (a formal academic title indicating that the individual had a doctorate and holds an academic position somewhat akin to lecturer in the US system) at the University of Dorpat—known today as the University of Tartu—in Estonia. Sander Gilman identifies Weinberg as a physician (Smart Jews: The Construction of the Image of Jewish Superior Intelligence [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996], 52). Whether or not Weinberg was Jewish is unclear, though it is highly unlikely. At the time, the university town of Dorpat (Tartu) was relatively tolerant of Jews, and there was a significant Jewish student presence at the university. However, according to Tonu Parming (“The Jewish Community and Inter-Ethnic Relations in Estonia, 1918–1940,” Journal of Baltic Studies 10, no. 3 [1979]:250), “The University of Tartu had no Jewish faculty members until 1934.” (I thank Rachel Rothstein for this reference.) I have nonetheless included Weinberg’s article here because of the material discussed and because the piece appeared in a “Jewish” journal—that is, a journal funded by the Jewish community and created and run by Jews, with the explicit purpose of influencing Jewish public opinion. Whether or not the editors agreed with every detail of Weinberg’s argument, it seems safe to say that they believed the general topic of the essay was a legitimate one.
It is known that numerous researchers have dealt with the national and racial traits of the Jews from a variety of perspectives. Physical anthropology, too, has frequently sought to get a grip on this object of study. Since Blumenbach, Pruner Bey, and H. Welcker,33 who gathered the first real facts in this area, observers have been arming themselves with calipers and tape measures, advancing ever deeper into the racial body of the Jewish Volk. A great number of facts and findings have been accumulated, which will hopefully yield rich results once researchers succeed in differentiating between the essential and nonessential, and once a presentation thereof becomes feasible on the basis of a well-founded methodology and unified principles. We already possess several statistical surveys from the East and Southeast of Europe—and now recently from America as well—which aim for a systematic inquiry into general anatomy, head form, pigmentation, and proportions of limbs, and even cover the consideration of certain physiological and pathological conditions.
At any rate, it must be admitted that the research done up until now has made its way only to the threshold in terms of exploring the racial organism. Its inner spaces, that holy of holies, the sinuous paths of the brain’s convolutions, the wonderfully delicate structure of the nervous system, the labyrinthine systems and components of the cells and fibers, encompassing the most sublime riddles of the human spirit—at no time have these been opened up and illuminated. Even enthusiastic and intrepid researchers have not dared to approach and then knock on this door. And yet it remains true that nowhere else than in the brain can the “birthplace” of human history be located, the cradle of art and that mysterious bridal chamber in which body and soul—the gods of light and the children of nature—celebrate orgies (Reil); that it is not merely the fate of individuals, but just as much the past and future of entire races and organic communities that have been decided by a rather small amount of brain matter, which, with its precious particles and atoms, hides itself from us in its marble vault.
I will make an attempt here to contribute some material to the problem at hand and to explain its relevance for the racial theory about the brain.
The observation has been made in some countries that the Jews already differ from the surrounding populations in terms of head size, and in particular the formation of the cranium. Lombroso,34 for instance, noticed that the Semitic elements within the Turin population possess a somewhat smaller cranial capacity than the other inhabitants of this region,35 and this was attributed to the fact that, relatively speaking, one seldom meets with very large crania among Jews, whereas middle-sized and long cranial shapes predominate.
The smaller cranial development might in this case have led to a certain underdevelopment of brain mass.
This question, which of course is of no minor importance for the anthropological status of a race, thus has to be tackled first. That is to say it has, on the one hand, to be considered whether or not this phenomenon is more generally observable and also to what extent it accords preliminarily with the results of firsthand examinations of the brain.
[. . .]
Seeing as the direct, though of course still insufficient, investigations into the crania and brains appear to corroborate, to a certain degree, the aforementioned assumption of a quantitative underdevelopment of the brains of Jews, it has to be asked, in order to establish a solid foundation for the matter: what can we learn, in this regard, from measurements taken of living individuals, which numerically appear to be relatively uncontestable as objects for our method? And might these, in turn, serve as a control [a control group] for those direct weightings and cubings, or even as a framework for anatomical comparisons of the races?
In order to determine this in the most direct way, I will take as my departure point the horizontal circumference of the head as the means by which to measure brain size. This [circumference] generally, and particularly within one distinct cranial type, stands in a more or less constant and direct relation to the volume of the cranium.36
Rather uniform results regarding the dimensions of the cranial circumferences of Jews emerge out of the anthropological surveys undertaken in various regions of the Russian Empire. The table found below [not included in this book], based on the efforts of Weissenberg (southern Russia, 1897), Jakowenko (White Russia, 1898), Talko-Hrynewicz [Talko-Gritschewitsch] (Kleinrussland, 1892), and Elkind (Poland, 1903), includes the measurements of approximately 1,000 adult males of Jewish nationality. It shows the largest average horizontal circumference (565 mm) in White Russia, and a somewhat smaller (550–53 mm) circumference among the southern and western Jews of the empire. Within the Slavic environment, the Russian Jews appear, when it comes to cranial circumference, to be absolutely superior to Poles and White Russians, to whom we can make comparisons thanks to the previously mentioned work of Elkind and Talko; the average measure among Poles and White Russian Jews is 550 mm, and among Russian Jews roughly 554 mm.37 They have the same advantage when, instead of absolute brain size, one takes into consideration comparative percentages in relation to body size. It then also becomes evident that while the Jewish elements in Russia show on average 35 percent head circumference, their Slavic compatriots demonstrate only 33.4 percent. The difference in the numbers, as should be readily acknowledged, is not really as insignificant as one might think at first glance.
Seemingly unfavorable for the Jews are the conclusions of a general comparison of head circumference between the Jews and their racial neighbors—that is, the actual Poles of the Vistula region. [A chart not included in this book shows: Polish Jews: 1,610 kg; Polish Slavs: 1,640 kg. Polish Jews: 1,249 mm; Polish Slavs: 1,255 mm.] These totals—1,255 and 1,249—at least show there is some difference, though [the Jews’ number] is hardly significantly less than that of the Slavs (the other tribal groups [Stämme] could not be compared, since for them the survey did not concern itself with matters of cranial circumference measurements). One should not forget, however, the role played here by the differences in height. The Polish Slavs are on average a total of 30 mm taller than their Jewish compatriots. If, for example, one equalizes the ratio or proportion with regard to stature, then for a 1,000 mm height, one finds an average of 765.2 mm head circumference among Poles, and 775.7 among Jews—as the numbers above will easily show. It has already been remarked about many races that small individuals have larger heads in relation to their body size than do larger individuals.
As far as I can see, the available surveys thus do not seem to support the contention that there is a quantitative underdevelopment of the cranium among those of the Jewish race (Volksstamm); the results from Russia in fact rather contradict that contention. The evidence from direct measurements of skulls—which, on account of the meager amount of firsthand material on which such evidence rests, does not elicit a great deal of confidence in the first place—gets completely drowned out by what comprehensive studies of living material tell us. The same probably holds true for the results of brain weight, which undoubtedly will have to be corrected in the future. For if these results were correct, then we would be left with the option of assuming that, since the underdevelopment of cranial capacity among the Jews cannot be demonstrated, Jewish brains of the same size are lighter than those of other races—that is, that they are lacking in specific brain mass. As far as current research goes, it is not completely improbable that notable differences and fluctuations in specific brain weights are connected to race and individuality, perhaps as well to gender and particular health conditions.38 But more certain proof concerning the connection to race has not been brought forth, and the materials at hand still appear too indeterminate and uncertain to find a practical utilization in comparative racial science.
In comparison to the research into the development of brain mass, one might emphasize the conclusion that, as Galen said, it is not the quantity (how much) but the quality (the how) of a thing that determines its real value. As the oft-used analogy has it, a church clock is not necessarily more precise than a pocket watch. The first steps in the investigation into the morphological racial particularity of Jewish brains have already been taken. Its success appears in many respects remarkable and signifies the need for further inquiry into this difficult subject. Space forbids any further discussion here; this has been dealt with already elsewhere.39
33. [Hermann Welcker (1822–97) was a German physical anthropologist.]
34. [Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909) was an Italian Jewish anthropologist and medical researcher who is considered one of the founders of modern criminology. He is best known for his theory of the “born criminal,” which posited that criminality was an inherited trait and that criminals could be identified, even before they committed a crime, by their particular physiognomic features.]
35. C. Lombroso, Der Antisemitismus und die Juden im Lichte der modernen Wissenschaft, German translation by Dr. H. Kurella (Leipzig, G. H. Wigand, 1894). [. . .] The larger average of the measure of cranial capacity among the non-Jews of Turin is conditioned in part by the greater frequency of individuals of larger stature, in part by the greater number of those who are trocho- and hydrocephalic; in addition, other anomalies that produce larger crania volume. According to Lombroso, small crania often appear among Jews and non-Jews alike in Turin.
36. A detailed analysis of skull diameter and circumference in relation to the internal volume of the cranium, as it has been made possible now by the method of Manouviers and especially due to the recent suggestions of Beddoe (L’Anthropologie XIV, 267, 1903), has been intentionally omitted here since the fundamentals of these methods cannot be given in a few lines within the limited space of an essay.
37. One finds analogous results among Venetians. Lombroso (op. cit., 1893) identified there [in Venice] among five Jews an average cranial circumference of 580 mm, while among 10 non-Jews 569 mm. The same was true for the cranial capacity calculated from external head masses, which among the former [the Jews] is 1664 cbcm [cubic centimeters] while among the latter only 1561 cbcm. Lombroso freely admits, and rightfully so, that his sample is small and that it is hardly conclusive given the much more abundant material from Turin, measurements which produce different results.
38. L. Bolk, Beziehungen zwischen Hirnvolum und Schädelkapazität nebst Bemerkungen über das Hirngewicht der Holländer, Petrus Camper, 1904.
39. R. Weinberg, “Das Gehirn der Juden Russ.,” Zeitschrift für Anthropologie, 1902; ibid., “Über einige ungewöhnliche Befunde an Judenhirnen,” Biologisches Centralblatt, vol. XXIII, 1903.