Eugenetica in democrazia. Uomini e topi: il discorso di Mariella Mehr all’Università di Basilea

Eugenics in democracy. Of mice and men: the discourse of Mariella Mehr at the Basel University From 1924 to 1973 a Swiss federal agency provided a eugenic project of national re-education of gypsies people, which was considered degenerated and dangerous for national community. Almost 6000 children were taken from their families, given in adoption, with the annulment of any relationship to their families, arriving in many cases at the reclusion in prison or psychiatric clinic, with the use of sterilization as the definitive disciplinary measure. This long standing eugenic project started to be criticized at the beginning of the Seventies, even by the public action of the poetess and writer Mariella Mehr, whose life has been harshly marked by this project. Twenty years later she received an honoury degree as a public recognition of giving voice to people who suffered the brutality of this project. That lectio magistralis, published here integrally for the first time, discusses with implacable and lucid words the role of knowledge and public institutions in conceiving and organizing this project and the persistence of eugenics and racist interpretations of gypsies, which had and still have deeply and resistant roots in the savants community, even after the fall of totalitarian regimes and in democratic contexts.