Bruno Beger was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 Racial anthropologist who worked for the Ahnenerbe

Ahnenerbe

The Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935, by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...

. In that role he participated in Ernst Schäfer

Ernst Schäfer

Ernst Schäfer was a famous German hunter and zoologist in the 1930s, specializing in ornithology.-Biography:Schäfer is most famous for his three expeditions to Tibet in 1931, in 1934–1935, and in 1938–1939. The first two expeditions were led by the American Brooke Dolan II...

's 1938 journey to Tibet

Tibet

Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...

, helped the Race and Settlement Office of the SS

Schutzstaffel

The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

 identify Jews and helped locate subjects needed for a skeleton collection to help educate on the identification of Jewish peoples.

Early life

Beger was born in 1911 to an old Heidelberg

Heidelberg

-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...

 family that soon after came upon hard times when Beger's father was killed in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, but a family friend paid for him to attend the University of Jena where he was first exposed to Hans F. K. Günther during a lecture, a man who would encourage him through his early academic career in anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 and ethnology

Ethnology

Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...

.

Service in the SS

In 1934, Beger began working a part-time job in the Race and Settlement Office of the SS where he eventually became a section head. Beger was asked to be part of a journey to Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, but while this expedition was waiting for final approval, he was invited on a trip to Tibet led by Ernst Schäfer

Ernst Schäfer

Ernst Schäfer was a famous German hunter and zoologist in the 1930s, specializing in ornithology.-Biography:Schäfer is most famous for his three expeditions to Tibet in 1931, in 1934–1935, and in 1938–1939. The first two expeditions were led by the American Brooke Dolan II...

 which he accepted instead.

In a proposal he wrote to Schäfer, Beger stated his contribution to the expedition would be "to study the current racial-anthropological situation through measurements, trait research, photography and moulds... and to collect material about the proportion, origins, significance and development of the Nordic race in this region."

The German Ernst Schäfer Tibet Expedition

All through the expedition, Beger kept a travel diary which was published in book form 60 years later, Mit der deutschen Tibetexpedition Ernst Schäfer 1938/39 nach Lhasa (Wiesbaden, 1998). Only 50 copies of it exist.

Racial experiences

Beger worked together with August Hirt

August Hirt

August Hirt , an SS-Hauptsturmführer , served as a chairman at the Reich University in Strasbourg during World War II....

 at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg

Reichsuniversität Straßburg

The Reichsuniversität Straßburg was founded 1941 by the National Socialists in Alsace while the regular University of Strasbourg had moved to Clermont-Ferrand since 1940. The purpose was to create a continuity to the German character of the German Imperial University of Strasbourg, that had been...

. His duty, which he carried out, was to provide the Nazi physician with detainees of diverse ethnic types from various concentration camps in order to serve Hirt's lethal racial experiments. In these endeavours he was assisted by doctors Hans Endres

Hans Endreß

Hans Endraß was a Hauptsturmführer in the Waffen SS during World War II who was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross...

, Hans Fleischhacker

Hans Fleischhacker

Hans Fleischhacker was a German anthropologist with the Ahnenerbe and a Schutzstaffel Obersturmführer....

, Heinrich Rübel and Rudolf Trojan (Pringle:254).

After the war

In 1974 he was convicted by a German court as an accessory to 86 murders for his part in procuring and preparing the victims of the Jewish skeleton collection

Jewish skeleton collection

The Jewish skeleton collection was an attempt by the Nazis to create an anthropological display to showcase the alleged racial inferiority of the "Jewish race" and to emphasize the Jews status as untermenschen as opposed to the German race which the Nazis considered to be Aryan ubermenschen...

at Auschwitz concentration camp. He was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment, the minimum sentence, but did not serve any time in prison.

According to his family, Beger died in Königstein/Taunus on October 12, 2009.

Published work

• Meine Begenungen mit dem Ozeam des Wissens, Kurt und Dieter Schwartz, Königstein, 1986, 11 p.
• Mit der deutschen Tibetexpedition Ernst Schäfer 1938/39 nach Lhasa, Schwartz, Wiesbaden, 1998, 280 p.