Kurt Gottschaldt's ambiguous relationship with national socialism

Kurt Gottschaldt (1902-1991) was active in psychological research in Germany throughout much of the past century. His best-known contributions relate to three "twin camps" he ran in the late 1930s. These twin camps were designed help assess the relative contributions of heredity and environment in determining the development of psychological attributes and behavior. Gottschaldt's conclusions favored a hereditarian interpretation of his results, and Gottschaldt promoted the relevance of his twin research to "race psychology." Although Gottschaldt is sometimes described as a defender of scientific objectivity who maintained independence from Nazi ideology during the National Socialist era, some of his work suggests that a modest revision of this view may be required.