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Teutonic race, but of the “barbaric” Mongoloid Finnish race. Although Virchow’s intention was to disprove any identification of race with the German nation, the survey had the effect of racializing the map of Germany, showing as it did a greater concentration of Nordic types in northern Germany.⁵² The results ended up dividing the map of Germany along a north-south divide, with a large presence of blond type in the east, including the territories of Prussian Poland.⁵³ Virchow attributed the presence of Nordic types in the Polish provinces to migration and racial mixing throughout history. Referring to his craniological studies, he remarked in 1900 that he had “not yet managed to recognize which one is a Slavic and which one is a Germanic skull.”⁵⁴ The majority of German anthropologists tended to categorize Poles and other Slavs in similar terms as Jews, each described as a type characterized by dark hair, dark eyes, and brown skin. Virchow challenged the tendency among scientists to nationalize race and anatomical differences. He believed that race had nothing to do with culture and language. Members of the same racial type could speak different languages and have different cultures, while members of different racial types could share language and culture. In the German nation, which he viewed as largely mixed, he saw the coexistence of several racial types spanning across linguistic and cultural identifications.

      In his Report on the Typhus Epidemic in Upper Silesia of the 1840s, Virchow provides the reader with an extensive description of the Polish inhabitants of the region.⁵⁵ First, he claims that all of Upper Silesia was Polish and that conversation with poor peasants and townspeople was impossible without knowing the language or the assistance of an interpreter. Contrary to their tribal brothers (Stammesbrüder) in Pomerania and Prussia, he observed that seven hundred years of territorial separation from “the mother nation,” by which he meant Poland, had not been enough to obliterate the Polish national character of Upper Silesians.⁵⁶ The years were however sufficient to destroy Upper Silesians’ national consciousness and corrupt their language. In terms of physical appearance, these subjects, commonly referred to as “diluted Poles” (Wasserpolacken), looked similar to Poles from the Lower Vistula and differed from Russians whose physiognomy, according to Virchow, was closer to their Mongolian neighbors than to Slavs. His description of Upper Silesians used opposing images of whiteness and unhygienic habits: “Everywhere we see good-looking faces with a very light skin, blue eyes and blond hair; these handsome features are certainly altered at an early age by cares and uncleanliness but are frequently exhibited in children of rare loveliness. Their way of life also reminds us of Poland proper: their dress, their houses, their social conditions, their uncleanliness and indolence are nowhere so closely similar as in the lower strata of the Polish nation. In particular as regards the two last named characteristics it would be hard to find them surpassed anywhere.”⁵⁷

      Virchow proposed that what separated these Poles from other Germans was a sociocultural difference, not a racial one, with laziness and uncleanliness being the most distinctive characteristics. He continued by saying:

      The Upper Silesian in general does not wash himself at all, but leaves it to celestial providence to free his body occasionally by a heavy shower of rain from the crusts of dirt accumulated on it. Vermin of all kinds, especially lice, are permanent guests on his body. As great as this squalor is the sloth of the people, their antipathy for mental and physical exertion, their overwhelming penchant for idleness or rather for lying around, which, coupled with a completely canine subservience, is so repulsive to any free man accustomed to work that he feels disgust rather than pity.⁵⁸

      This description of Poles in Upper Silesia contrasts significantly with notions of German diligence and cleanliness circulated at the time. The physician used the unhygienic behaviors and indolence of Upper Silesians to point to the cultural connections that linked the region to Poland, or the Polish lands, and that separated it from Germany. Some of the images that Virchow used in his report remind us of the “swinishness” that Georg Forster referred to when he was traveling through the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at the end of the eighteenth century. Yet, unlike Forster and many other scientists, Virchow refused to portray the negative images of Poles as national and racial essences.⁵⁹ He deemed it unfair “to place the true cause of these traits in the Polish nation,” and attempted to find the roots of such backward behaviors elsewhere.⁶⁰

      For Virchow, the continued use of the Polish language was part of the problem under Prussian rule. The territory had been cut off from the “mother nation” (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth) for a long time but was unable to receive the benefits of German culture. The efforts to Germanize the lands by using the school system had failed to achieve the purpose of connecting the province to the national progress of the other German lands. In Upper Silesia, the colonizing process was reversed. Rather than teaching their Polish pupils to speak German, German teachers ended up learning Polish. Virchow noticed that there were numerous families with German surnames and German “physiognomy” that did not speak German. It is important to note that while Virchow refused to use racial and national explanations of the disease, he admitted that there was a particular German manner and physiognomy that contrasted with the Polish manner and physical appearance.

      Another main factor that Virchow used to explain the dire conditions of Poles in Upper Silesia was the excessive power that the Catholic clergy exerted over the local population. When someone became ill, they immediately called a priest rather than a physician. In Virchow’s view, Upper Silesians waited for death calmly, and many of them did not believe in the powers of medical treatment. He considered people’s excessive confidence in religion and religious authority extremely dangerous, given the serious threat the epidemic posed to entire communities. Moreover, he accused government officials of encouraging such passive behavior and pointed out that, at a time when the educated class of the territories was urgently demanding physicians, the response usually received from authorities was that people did not need or want them.⁶¹

      Virchow also criticized the general indifference that the upper classes and Prussian authorities showed towards Polish suffering: “This habituation to misery, this hardening of feeling toward the sufferings of others is so general in the districts, that I would be the last to attack the local authorities because they did not attend to the dispatch of their partly quite serious and urgent reports with greater urgency and determination. What Prussian civil servant would not be silenced when always getting negative replies and regular refusals from Oppeln, from Breslau, from Berlin?”⁶²

      Clearly, the health care of Upper Silesians was not considered a priority among central state authorities. In fact, the Prussian government responded rather slowly to an epidemic that had been ravaging the lands for several months and had caused the death of 1,315 people in the first three months of 1848. Furthermore, the disease had taken hold of the territory in the middle of a terrible famine, which led people to call it “hunger-typhus.” Given the official apathy, the inhabitants of the province were forced to take care of their own well-being while the majority of the “Polish” population died of hunger and the dreadful disease.

      The recommendations that Virchow gave to the Prussian government to avoid further epidemiological disasters lay outside the traditional scientific realm of medicine. Instead of prescribing therapeutic measures to contain the typhus disease, the physician deemed it necessary to transform completely the political approach towards the lands. He suggested a greater degree of political participation in local matters, measures to increase the income levels of the inhabitants, who lived in a quasi-serfdom system, and effective educational policies. Furthermore, Virchow recommended the total separation of church and state, official recognition of Polish as an official language, extensive agricultural reform, and less taxation on the poor. He even implied that the territories would be in much better shape if they were returned to the “mother nation.” The proposals also included the employment of “a better-trained corps of physician-reformers, acquainted with epidemiological principles, who could produce ‘long, detailed studies of local conditions.’”⁶³

      Although the Prussian state initially ignored Virchow’s recommendations, his report served to highlight many of the pressing problems affecting the Polish lands, especially in those areas with an overwhelming majority of Polish-speaking inhabitants. Virchow’s work was also useful in shaping the new Germanizing approach that imperial authorities

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