The Importance of Heredity

In the Third Reich, twin studies were lavishly funded as part of an effort to prove that Heredity was the key to many human talents and imperfections. Twin studies purportedly demonstrated the heredibility of everything from epilepsy, criminality, memory, and hernias to tuberculosis, cancer, schizophrenia, and divorce. In 1939, Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick ordered the registration of all twins, triplets, or quadruplets born in the Reich for the express purpose of research into nature and nurture.