One individual who was particularly distinguishable as a catalyst for the German eugenics movement was Alfred Ploetz (Weiss 1990). Ploetz (1860–1940), a German physician and biologist, was one of the earliest proponents of the German eugenics movement; it was he who coined the term Rassenhygiene, or racial hygiene (Weindling 1989; Weiss 2010). He was fascinated with Darwinism and was profoundly influenced by Haeckel and his monist philosophy, from which he drew the idea of the need to elevate the status of the nation’s biological elite.
