Hans Weinert was born on 14 April 1887 in Braunschweig, Germany, the son of Hermann Weinert and Maria Steinkamp. After graduating from the Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Braunschweig in 1905, he studied physiology and anatomy at the University of Göttingen from 1905 to 1907. Weinert completed his doctorate at the University of Leipzig in 1909 and then worked as a schoolteacher in Eisleben from 1913 to 1918. Weinert’s research interests began to take shape while he studied anthropology and medicine at the University of Berlin from 1924 to1926, where he worked with Ernst Fischer and Theodor Mollison conducting research collecting anthropometric measurements of students. Weinert completed his habilitation thesis titled Biologische Grundlagen für Rassenkunde und Rassenhygiene [Biological Foundations of Racial Science and Racial Hygiene] in 1926 under the guidance of the anthropologist Felix von Luschan. He accepted a position as Privatdozent (lecturer) at the University of Berlin from 1926 to 1927 and served as an assistant at the Anthropologische Institut [Anatomical Institute] at the University of Munich from 1927 to 1928.

In 1927 the German government established the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik [Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics], which soon became one of the most important centers for anthropological research in the country. Weinert was appointed a Privatdozent (lecturer) at the Institute in 1927, a position that he held until 1935, and in 1928 he became the custodian of the collection of human skulls at the Institute. In addition to his position at the Institute, Weinert also held the position of professor extraordinarius in anthropology at the University of Berlin from 1932 to 1935. By this time, Weinert’s research was focused on human evolution, the analysis of human fossils, and the study of human prehistory. In 1925 he published an account of a skull belonging to a skeleton that the Swiss archaeologist Otto Hauser had excavated from the French Paleolithic site of Le Moustier in 1908. The German anthropologist Hermann Klaatsch had examined the skeleton and designated it a new type of Ice Age human that he called Homo mousteriensis. However, after Weinert reconstructed the skull and compared it with other human fossils he argued that the skeleton from Le Moustier represented a Neanderthal (Weinert 1925). He followed his analysis of the Le Moustier skull by a thorough investigation of the famous Pithecanthropus erectus fossils that the Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois had discovered on Java, Indonesia, in the 1890s (Weinert, 1928).

The archaeological and fossil record of Ice Age humans had grown significantly during the early twentieth century. Weinert’s Menschen der Vorzeit. Ein Überblick über die altsteinzeitlichen Menschenreste [Pre-Historic Men. A Survey of the Human Remains from the Paleolithic], first published in 1930, was a valuable summary of the hominid fossil record and was revised in a second edition that appeared in 1947. Weinert made an important contribution to hominid paleontology when he extended his earlier study of the Pithecanthropus erectus fossils by comparing them with the Sinanthropus (Peking Man) fossils discovered by Canadian anatomist Davidson Black and Chinese paleontologist Pei Wenzhong at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, in China. The similarities that Weinert observed in the Sinanthropus fossils and Pithecanthropus specimen led him to argue that they in fact belong to the same genus and thus Sinanthropus should be reclassified as Pithecanthropus (Weinert 1931a).

In addition to his anthropological analyses of human fossils, Weinert was among an early group of scientists who realized that the comparison of blood proteins and blood groups between humans and the existing species of apes could offer clues to the phylogenetic relationships between apes and humans, which had long been a major subject of speculation among evolutionary biologists and anthropologists. Weinert conducted studies of blood groups among apes, and he identified the same groups (O, A, B, AB) in apes as are found in humans, while the blood groups in monkeys differed from those in humans. In a paper titled “Blutgruppenuntersuchungen an Menschenaffen und ihre stammesgeschichtliche Bewertung” [“Blood Group Tests on Apes and their Phylogenetic Evaluation”], published in 1931, Weinert argued that these results show a close phylogenetic relationship between apes and humans and support the anthropoid origin of humans. Throughout his career, Weinert was a strong proponent of the idea that humans were more closely related to chimpanzees than other apes and that humans had evolved from the chimpanzee lineage. Rather controversially, this research also prompted Weinert to suggest the potential value of testing whether it might be possible to create a hybrid of a human and ape by artificially inseminating a female chimpanzee using sperm taken from a Black African, preferably a pygmy. At this time Weinert published his second influential book, Ursprung der Menschheit [The Origin of Mankind] (1932). In this book, he discussed the anatomy of primates and hominids. Significantly, he argued that gorillas and chimpanzees are more closely related evolutionarily to humans than are gibbons and orangutans (for many years some prominent anthropologists had argued the opposite, that humans may have evolved from the gibbon or orangutan lineage and thus were more closely related to these apes than to chimpanzees and gorillas). In the book, Weinert also discussed the stages of hominid evolution and the process of hominization as inferred from the current hominid fossil record, which included Sinanthropus, the Neanderthals, and early human fossils.

Many competing theories of how humans evolved, each presenting quite different phylogenetic relationships between humans and apes, existed during this time. In addition, anthropologists also differed in their notions of the origin of the various human races. In 1934 Weinert published his habilitation thesis, Biologische Grundlagen für Rassenkunde und Rassenhygiene [Biological Foundations of Racial Science and Racial Hygiene], which he had completed almost a decade earlier. In this book he addressed the question of the phylogenetic relationship of humans to the other primates as well as the origin of human racial variation. Weinert criticized the idea supported by some anthropologists, such as Hermann Klaatsch, that each human race evolved separately from a different ape ancestor (for example the idea that “Negros” evolved from the gorilla lineage, “Mongoloids” from the orangutan lineage). However, he still accepted the widely held view that there were superior and inferior human races. He explained the origin of human races and their inequality by arguing that the “lower races” evolved first but did not continue to evolve over time, whereas other human populations continued to evolve into the “higher races”, eventually culminating in the emergence of the Caucasian race, which in his view had evolved from Cro-Magnons.

Weinert left Berlin in 1935 to become professor of anthropology at the University of Kiel, where he was also appointed director of the Anthropological Institute at the university. By this time, conditions in Germany had changed dramatically with the rise of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, which affected every part of German social, political, and academic life. Weinert became a member of the Nationalsozialistischer Lehrerbund (National Socialist Teachers’ Association) in 1934 and became a member of the Nazi party in 1937. At Kiel, Weinert continued to study human evolution. He conducted excavations in Italy and France during the late 1930s and expressed views about the origin of the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals that were criticized by Nazi officials such as Assien Bohmers. In Die Rassen der Menschheit [The Races of Mankind], first published in 1935 (with new editions appearing in 1939 and 1941) Weinert distinguished three primary human races: Nordic, Mongolian, and Negro. He also adopted the view expressed by many anthropologists that the Aboriginal Australians represented the earliest form of humanity. He eventually came to reject the idea of the Asian origin of the Nordic race, which he suggested had arisen in Europe instead. He argued that the Nordic race appeared at the end of the Ice Age when the glaciers retreated from Germany.

 

Recently discovered human fossils were also contributing to the debate over human evolution and the prehistoric populations of Europe. Weinert (1936a) published a description of the Steinheim cranium, first discovered by the owner of a gravel pit in Steinheim, Germany, along with extinct animal bones in 1933. The skull possessed a mixture of Neanderthal and modern human features, but Weinert argued that it represented a Neanderthal and that its more modern features were the result of the retention of juvenile traits and the fact that the cranium was from a female individual. In a separate paper, he examined anew the human mandible found in the Mauer sand pit, near Heidelberg in Germany, in 1907 and originally described by the German paleontologist Otto Schoetensack. Schoetensack assigned this jaw bone to an extinct form of human he called Homo heidelbergensis, and on the basis of his new analysis, Weinert (1937) noted the similarity between this specimen and Pithecanthropus mandibles. Weinert turned his attention next to study the fragments of a human skull that the German physician and explorer Ludwig Kohl-Larsen discovered near Lake Njarasa, in Tanzania, in 1935. Kohl-Larsen suggested the fossils represented an extinct form of human he called Africanthropus njarasensis. Weinert (1938a; 1939a) argued that the fossils dated to the early Pleistocene, and he suggested that Africanthropus was closely related to Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus and represented the equivalent stage of hominid evolution in Africa (see also Weinert, Bauermeister and Remane 1939).

In addition to his studies of human fossils, Weinert continued to theorize about human evolution and the origin of human races in light of the growing archaeological and human fossil record. Entstehung der Menschenrassen [The Formation of Human Races], first published in 1938 with a second edition in 1941, again explored the question of the origin of the human races, when they had emerged, and the causes for their formation. Weinert now identified four major races (Australoid, Europoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid) with each divided into subgroups. He addressed the question of whether some modern human races, such as the Australians or Mongoloids, could be traced back to earlier hominids such as Pithecanthropus or Sinanthropus. Regarding human evolution, he argued that the chimpanzee lineage and the human lineage had separated toward the end of the Pliocene and that the various human races only appeared in the Pleistocene. Weinert divided the stages of human evolution during the Pleistocene into three periods: the Pithecanthropus stage of the early Pleistocene represented by Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, and Africanthropus; the Neanderthal stage represented by Homo soloensis (Java), Rhodesian man in Africa, and Neanderthals in Europe; and the Cro-Magnon stage represented by the Wadjak skull (from Indonesia), the Boskop skull (from Africa), and Cro-Magnon specimens from Europe. Thus, Weinert believed that the Neanderthals were the direct ancestors of modern humans, a view advocated by the American anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička and the German anthropologist Franz Weidenreich but opposed by the majority of anthropologists at this time. However, Weinert believed that the modern human races had only emerged at the early Homo sapiens stage of evolution and could not be traced back to the Neanderthals. In Der geistige Aufstieg der Menschheit vom Ursprung bis zur Gegenwart [The Intellectual Rise of Man from his Origins to the Present-Day] (1940), Weinert argued that the biological and anatomical evolution of the human body could be correlated with the development of the human intellect. And Stammesgeschichte der Menschheit [Phylogeny of Mankind], published in 1941, presented his views on the phylogenetic relationship between humans and the apes and the place of various hominid fossils in the human evolutionary tree.

In one of his last scientific papers Weinert (1950) examined a hominid fossil that Ludwig Kohl-Larsen discovered at a site then called Garusi (now Laetoli, in Tanzania) during the East African Expedition in 1939. Weinert studied the fossil, a maxillary bone (upper jaw) that still contained three teeth and concluded the specimen resembled the Meganthropus palaeojavanicus fossils discovered by the German paleontologist Ralph von Koenigswald in 1941 in Indonesia. Thus, Weinert assigned the Garusi fossil to a new species Meganthropus africanus, although other paleoanthropologists argued the fossil represented a species of Australopithecus.

During the Nazi period, Weinert served in the Rassen- und Siedlungsamt SS [Race and Settlement Office SS], which determined eligibility for entry into the SS in order to ensure the racial purity of SS personnel. Toward the end of the Second World War, Kiel was bombed and the Anatomical Institute at the university, where Weinert worked, was damaged. During the Allied bombing of Kiel in 1944 Weinert’s house was destroyed. After the war, he taught at the renamed Institut für menschliche Erblehre und Eugenik [Institute of Human Genetics and Eugenics] in Kiel where he remained until 1955. Weinert was a member of a number of scientific institutions during the course of his career. He became a member of the Instituto Italiano di Paleontologia Umana [Italian Institute of Human Paleontology] in 1942. In the same year, he also became a member of the Ernst-Haeckel-Gesellschaft [Ernst Haeckel Society] in Jena. Weinert was appointed to the prestigious Leopoldina (Deutschen Akademie der Naturforscher) in 1940. He served as the co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde [Journal of Racial Science] and was the editor of the Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie [Journal of Morphology and Anthropology] from 1949 to 1956. After his retirement, Weinert spent the remainder of his life in Heidelberg, where he died on 7 March 1967.

Selected Bibliography

Der Schädel des eiszeitlichen Menschen von Le Moustier. J. Springer, 1925.

“Pithecanthropus erectus.” Zeitschrift für Anatomie und Entwicklungsgeschichte 87 (1928): 429–547.

Menschen der Vorzeit. Ein Überblick über die altsteinzeitlichen Menschenreste. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1930 (2^nd edition 1947).

“Der ‘Sinanthropus pekinensis’ als Bestatigung des Pithecanthropus erectus.” Zeitschrift fur Morphologie und Anthropologie 29 (1931a): 159-187.

“Blutgruppenuntersuchungen an Menschenaffen und ihre stammesgeschichtliche Bewertung.” Zeitschrift für Rassenphysiologie 4 (1931b): 8-23.

Ursprung der Menschheit; über den engeren Anschluss des Menschengeschlechts an die Menschenaffen. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1932 (2^nd edition 1944).

Biologische Grundlagen für Rassenkunde und Rassenhygiene. Stuttgart: F. Enke,

1934 (2^nd edition 1943.

Unsere Eiszeit-Ahnen. Berlin: Brehm, 1934 (2^nd edition 1938).

Die Rassen der Menschheit. Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1935 (2^nd edition 1939, 3^rd edition 1941).

“Der Urmenschenschädel von Steinheim.” Zeitschrift fur Morphologie und Anthropologie 35 (1936): 413-518.

Zickzackwege in der Entwicklung des Menschen. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1936.

“Dem Unterkiefer von Mauer zur 30jahrigen Wiederkehr seiner Entdeckung.” Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie 37 (1937): 102-113.

“Der erste afrikanische Affenmensch ‘Africanthropus niarasensis’.” Der Biologe 7 (1938a): 125-129.

Entstehung der Menschenrassen. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1938 (2^nd edition 1941).

Vom rassischen Werden der Menschheit. 3 vols. Erfurt: K. Stenger, 1938.

“Africanthropus der neue Affenmenschenfund vom Njarasa-See in Ostafrika.” Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie, 38 (1939a): 18-24.

Hans Weinert, W. Bauermeister and A. Remane. “Africanthropus njarasensis. Beschreibung und phylethische Einordnung des ersten Affenmenschen aus Ostafrika.” Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie, 37 (1939): 252-308.

Der geistige Aufstieg der Menschheit vom Ursprung bis zur Gegenwart. Stuttgart: F. Enke, 1940.

Stammesgeschichte der Menschheit. Stuttgart: Kosmos, Gesellschaft der Naturfreunde, 1941.

Die Riesen-Affenmenschen und ihre stammesgeschichtliche Bedeutung. München: Müller & Steinicke, 1948.

“Über die neuen Vor- und Frühmenschenfunde aus Afrika, Java, China und Frankreich.” Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie 42 (1950): 113-148.

Stammesentwicklung der Menschheit. Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1951.

Secondary Sources

Johann Schaeuble. “Hans Weinert 70 Jahre alt.” Anthropologischer Anzeiger 21 (1957): 88-89.

Johann Schaeuble. “Hans Weinert (1887-1967).” Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie 59 (1967): 104-105.

Ulrich Schaefer, “Hans Weinert, 1887-1967.” Anthropologischer Anzeiger 30 (1968): 315-316.

Ursula Zängl‑Kumpf. “Weinert, Hans (1887-1967).” In Frank Spencer (ed.). History of Physical Anthropology. Vol. 2, pp. 1110-1111. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

Beate Meyer. “Jüdische Mischlinge”: Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahrung 1933-1945. Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 1999.

Beate Meyer. “Hans Weinert, (Rasse)Anthropologe an der Universität Kiel von 1935 bis 1955.” In Michael Ruck and Heinrich Pohl, (eds.). Regionen im Nationalsozialismus, Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2003.