Document gaVz6K0yzZ34nX0ej392qoR2q

48 CHAPTER 2 era, accompanied by a sense that the New World Order will re quire the radical extirpation of the old. The transformation is cast in Nietzschean terms with the invocation of "twilight" metaphors: so we hear talk about the "twilight of tobacco" (Tabakdammerung) or of race (Astel's 1935 Rassenddmmerung), and so forth. The appeal to Nietzschean or Wagnerian imagery gave a poetic, one could say "operatic," flavor to Nazi racialist skulduggery. An equally curious aspect of Nazi cancer language is its obses sive romance with "enlightenment." Enlightenment (Aufklarung) was a frequent element of Nazi rhetoric, conveying roughly what we today would call "education," "outreach," or "public indoctri nation." The term was featured in the names of several party or ganizations: Walter Gross's Aufklarungsamt fur Bevolkerungspolitik und Rassenpflege (Office of Population Policy and Racial Care) was a kind of news bureau designed to keep Nazi party big wigs informed in matters of national and international racial pol icy (the office was later renamed the Rassenpolitisches Amt); recall also that Goebbels's propaganda ministry was actually called "The Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda" (Ministerium fur Volksaufklarung und Propaganda). Goebbels, Gross, and many other party officials characterized their work as Aufkldrungsarbeit--literally "the work of enlightenment"--as did many health authorities at this time. The Reich Anticancer Committee identified one of its duties as Publikumsaufklarung (education of the public);49 Brandenburg's Anticancer Committee professed an obligation to "enlighten" the population concerning the value of early detec tion.50 Enlightenment had been a feature of leftist and Weimar-era rhetoric (calls for Sexmlaufkldrung, or sex education, for example), but the Nazis gave it new and more sinister nuances. It is surprising, in retrospect, how pervasive this "enlighten ment" talk was. Medical officials talked endlessly about the need for Krebsaufkldrung, Volksaufklarung tiber den Krebs, or Aufklarung der Volksgenossen concerning the value of early detection. Nazi party officials showed Auflddrungsfilme (educational films), and antitobacco activists called for "aufklarende" articles to warn against the hazards of tobacco. One cancer office distinguished CLE1CHSCHALTUNC 49 Einzelaufkldrung from Volksaufklarung--depending upon whether the enlightenment was directed toward the individual or the pop ulation. (Men were said to be particularly in need of enlighten ment, since they were much less likely than women to visit a clinic for a routine cancer exam.)51 The word "enlightenment" is proba bly used more in the Nazi period than at any other time, before or since. What does Aufklarung mean in the Nazi era? The verb aufkldren most commonly means to clarify, to clear up, to educate, to inform, to instruct, to solve, to set right; an Aufklarer was a scout or a recon naissance pilot, but Aufklarung was (and is) also used as a term for sex education or criminal detective work. As originally popular ized in the eighteenth century, the noun Aufklarung was intended to contrast the illuminating power of science against the dark forces of ignorance and superstition. In the Nazi period, use of the word was not consciously intended to evoke any reference to "the Enlightenment." (The French lumiere was more often derided as an early ancestor of positivist apathy and the impoverished doctrine of "science for its own sake.'') The images evoked are rather those of public education, public indoctrination--as when psychiatric authorities professed an Aufkldrungspflicht to inform their patients they were about to be sterilized.52 Enlightenment in the Nazi era was not something you yourself strived to attain, but rather some thing you did to other people or other people did to you. The idea of enlightenment as personal refinement--as in Kant's original sense of coming to maturity and making decisions for yourself--is replaced by a notion of state-directed indoctrination and state serving elucidation. Nazi society was supposed to be transparent from above--a philosophy with far-reaching consequences, from pervasive eavesdropping to bans on attic storage. The original notion of casting light is not entirely lost, how ever. An obsessive quest for clarity is apparent in the alreadymentioned efforts to eliminate medical bureaucratese, and the quest for "clean speech" harmonized with the larger quest for bodily and political purity. Propaganda Minister Goebbels in March of 1942 took pride in announcing--at least to his diary--