Herman Bernhard Lundborg

Herman Bernhard Lundborg graduated in medicine at the Karolinska institutet in 1895 and received his doctorate at Uppsala in 1903. His doctoral dissertation, on the disease that bears his name, was considered a groundbreaking work in medical research. Besides describing the disease, he traced the affected family back to the 1700s. He concluded that the family had degenerated because of ”unwise marriages”.

He was habilitated for psychiatry and neurology in 1903 in Uppsala, and in 1915 also for racial research and racial biology.

Lundborg was extremely negative to Jewish people, and strongly involved in the ideology of racial hygiene that evolved from the beginning of the twentieth century. Besides his own work, he was the editor of the series of journals from the Svenska sällskapet för rashygien. From 1921 he was professor and head of the institute of racial biology, and in this position he was responsible for the massive mapping, The Racial Character of the Swedish Nation, from 1926.

• Klinische Studien und Erfahrungen hinsichtlich der familiären Myoklonie und damit verwandter Krankheiten. Stockholm, 1901.
• Die progressive Myoklonus-Epilepsie (Unverricht's Myoklonie).
  Uppsala, 1903.
• Om Släktsforskning och ärftlighetshygien. Lecture in Uppsala Läkareforening, October 7, 1904.
• En svensk bondesläkts historia. Sedd i rasbiologisk belysning.
  Stockholm, 1920.
• Rashygieniska sträfvanden. Almäna svenska läkartidningen, 1912.
• Medizinisch-biologische Familienforschungen innerhalb eines 2232-köpfigen Bauerngeschlechts in Schweden, Provinz Blekinge. Jena, 1913.
• Rasbiologi och rashygien. Små opopulärvetenskapliga skisser.
  Stockholm, 1914; 2nd edition, 1922.
• Svenska folktyper. Bildgalleri. Stockholm, 1919.
• Rasfrågor i modern belysning med särskild hänsyn till det svenska folket.
  Stockholm, 1919.
• Rassenbiologische Übersichten und Perspektiven. Jena, 1921.
• The racial characters of the Swedish nation.
  With F. J. Linders. Uppsala, 1926. Translated into German.
• Helge Pedersen:
  ”Gud har skapat svarta och vita människor, jäfvulen derimot halfnegeren.” En komparativ analyse av Jon Alfred Mjøen og Herman Lundborgs rasehygieniske ideer i Norge og Sverige. Ca. 1900-1935. Graduation thesis in history. University of Oslo, spring 2003.