Erich Meyer (biologist)

Erich Meyer (born 1905 in Halle) was a German teacher and National Socialist race theorist.

Biography

After graduating from high school in Leipzig in 1925, Meyer studied natural sciences at the University of Halle until earning his doctorate in 1928. He then became a trainee teacher and assessor at the Helmholtz School in Leipzig. In 1932, he joined the NSLB and in 1933 the NSDAP. In 1933, Meyer became the provisional head of the Higher Israelite School for a year and arranged the departure of the school's founder Ephraim Carlebach, before he was replaced for being too strict. In 1935, he taught as a Studienrat at the Lößnitzgymnasium in Radebeul. He became an employee of the Reich officer for racial affairs Karl Zimmermann.

In 1939, he was granted leave from teaching to complete the biology textbook for secondary schools, Lebenskunde, which he edited with Zimmermann. In 1942, he was head of the District Image Office, which was based in the Hans Schemm School. As a government functionary, he had contact with Klara May, the widow of Karl May, about honoring him on his 100th birthday.

After the end of the war, Meyer's work Kleine Erb- und Rassenkunde (1935), was placed on the list of literature to be eliminated in the Soviet Occupation Zone.

Works

• Neue sinnesbiologische Beobachtungen an Spinnen (1928; dissertation)
• Kleine Erb- und Rassenkunde: Ausgabe für den Gau Mecklenburg-Lübeck (1935; with Werner Dittrich and Rudolf Wiggers)
• Einführung in die Rassenlehre (1936)
• Dr. Erich Meyers farbige Kennbüchlein der Pflanzen- und Tierwelt (1942)
• Lebenskunde. Biologiebuch für Höhere Schulen (1934–1944; 4 volumes, with Karl Zimmermann)

References

• Hans-Christian Harten, Uwe Neirich, Matthias Schwerendt: Rassenhygiene als Erziehungsideologie des Dritten Reichs: Bio-bibliographisches Handbuch. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag (2006).
• Barbara Kowalzik, Lehrerbuch: die Lehrer und Lehrerinnen des Leipziger jüdischen Schulwerks 1912-1942, vorgestellt in Biogrammen. Leipziger Universitätsverlag (2006).