ZOLLSCHAN, IGNAZ

ZOLLSCHAN, IGNAZ (1877–1948), Austrian anthropologist and physician. Zollschan, who was born in Erlach, Lower Austria, graduated as a doctor and while working in private practice in Carlsbad turned his interests to anthropology. To combat the antisemitic racist theories of Houston S. *Chamberlain, he published his Das Rassenproblem unter besonderer Beruecksichtigung der theoretischen Grundlagen der juedischen Rassenfrage (1910, 1925⁵). As a Zionist he opposed Jewish Diaspora nationalism. In Revision des juedischen Nationalismus (1919) he attacked the Jewish demand for minority rights, and a revised edition of this work with a supplement, "Der Weg zum Maximalismus," appeared in the following year. In 1921 he analyzed the condition of Zionism in his Krise und Sezessionsgefahr im Zionismus und deren Ursachen. His interpretation of the Zionist problem stimulated the formulation of a current within German Zionism called Binyan ha-Areẓ.

Zollschan recognized the danger to world peace of Nazi racist theories as a tool of rabid nationalism and undertook a struggle to combat them. In 1933 he presented a plan to Thomas *Masaryk for the examination of the theoretical foundations of racialism which was taken up by the Prague Academy of Sciences. The academy submitted a proposal for an international conference on the subject to the leading international and national scientific bodies of the world, including those of the Vatican and the Ecumenical Council of the Protestant Churches. Dr. Beneš, then foreign minister of Czechoslovakia, submitted the plan to the Institute for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations, but the appeasement policy of Great Britain obstructed the involvement of the institute. Zollschan continued his efforts, set up a Society for the Scientific Investigations of the Racial Question in 1937, and in the following year traveled widely throughout Europe to obtain support for his work. One instance of success was the preparation in May 1938 of a papal syllabus calling on all academies to pursue joint scientific research into racial ideologies. The collapse of the Czechoslovak Republic nullified the entire enterprise. Zollschan settled in London, where he published his Racialism against Civilization (1942).

[Ephraim Fischoff]