The Imprint: Konrad Lorenz

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Konrad Lorenz born to a wealthy and distinguished surgeon, an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist conducted imprinting experiments, most famously with female geese, conditioning them to follow symbolic representations. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch.

These experiments reflected and reinforced a hierarchical worldview in which he positioned himself and his perspectives as inherently superior. Later in life, he criticized modern technological progress, using the example of people preferring central heating over building a fire—interpreting this preference as a sign of laziness.

Despite his disdain for comfort and modernity, Lorenz himself came from a privileged background. Raised in an affluent household, cared for by a nanny, and shielded from hardship, he never experienced hunger. Yet a hunger for control emerges in his scientific work—particularly in how he used imprinting not only as a biological mechanism but also as a metaphor for enforcing conformity.

He also promoted the idea that true happiness could only be attained through prior suffering, thereby justifying a worldview in which misery was not only normalized but framed as a prerequisite for fulfillment.

Lorenz’s influence, however, extended beyond ethology. In the early 1940s, he worked for the Office for Race and Settlement Policy (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt, or RuSHA) of the SS, where he actively supported Nazi ideology. During this period, he made explicitly eugenic and racist statements, such as:

„Ein Volk von Schwachsinnigen kann keine Kultur haben.“
("A people of imbeciles cannot have a culture.")

In an official RuSHA report, he further declared:

„Die Rassenhygiene ist genau so notwendig wie eine Körperhygiene; wer gegen sie verstößt, gefährdet das ganze Volk.“
("Racial hygiene is just as necessary as bodily hygiene; anyone who violates it endangers the whole people.")

These statements reflect Lorenz’s alignment with the racial hygiene doctrines of National Socialism, which sought to prevent the reproduction of individuals deemed "biologically inferior." He also asserted:

„Es ist Aufgabe der angewandten Biologie, die Vermehrung biologisch minderwertiger Menschen zu verhindern.“
("It is the task of applied biology to prevent the reproduction of biologically inferior people.")

These deeply troubling views are documented in Richard Weikart’s From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), and they serve as a stark reminder of how scientific authority can be co-opted to serve dangerous ideological agendas.

© 2025-2030 Sieglinde W. Alexander. All writings by Sieglinde W. Alexander have a fife year copy right. Library of Congress Card Number: LCN 00-192742 ISBN: 0-9703195-0-9 

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