Influence of Alcohol on the Degeneration of the Nation in the Period between the World Wars

Abstract

The article deals with the condition called “alcohol degeneration.” Between the World Wars, solving this problem gained a new impetus from increasingly radical solutions. The nation and responsibilities towards the nation and the state were becoming more and more of a norm. Individuals who had fallen prey to alcoholic stupefaction became a burden to society and parasites on the nation, according to the well-known degeneration theories. Because of “evidently” corrupt genetic material, alcoholics became inferior in the eyes of the refiners of the national essence and an obstacle in the path of the evolutionary idealists who dreamed about the next stage in the development of mankind. Dr Avgust Munda, lawyer and Lecturer in Penal Law at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana, for example, suggested in a law journal that “all drunkards who have been stripped of their dignity should be sterilized”. In the supplement to the Medical Journal called Evgenika, they agreed with his views: “This might have an enormous effect in Slovenia, yet a radical and necessary one. As far as sterilization goes, it could be performed with consent. The author thus cites Kohlrausch, who believed compulsory sterilization was logical: 'The will of an individual unconditionally must serve the good of the community.'”