“Quantity Itself Generates Quality”: Family Conceptions Between Catholicism,Nationalism,and Eugenics in Slovakia in the Late 1930s and Early 1940s

Modern family policy, including around the issue of birth control, only began to develop in Slovakia in the twentieth century. In the period between the two world wars, the problems of abortion and sterilization increasingly became the subject of disputes and polemics between the secular left and, as a rule, the Christian right. The latter insisted on the model of the traditional family with hierarchically arranged relations between the sexes. In the present study, these connections are examined in the context of nationalist efforts to achieve Slovak autonomy in the Czechoslovak Republic, which were associated with the Hlinka Slovak People's Party (HSĽS), originally a party of political Catholicism, which was gradually overlaid with a nationalist agenda. Of particular interest are the ideological intersections between Catholicism, nationalism, and family politics, which resulted in fantasies of “national death” and growth, accompanied by contemporary reflections on racial hygiene. The study shows how these contexts influenced the Catholic autonomist movement in Slovakia in the late 1930s, and to what extent they accompanied the building of the Slovak state regime in the early 1940s in the context of debates about so-called positive eugenics, racial hygiene, and anti-abortion campaigns.

The Slovak population of the Kingdom of Hungary during the long nineteenth century tends to be assigned to non-dominant ethnic groups or so-called new or small nations. ¹ Therefore, from the beginning, the Slovak nationalist movement also sought to anchor itself in broader, “macro-nationalist” discourses. ² The backwardness of Slovak nationalism was manifested not only by the weight of confessional factors, especially by the connection with Protestantism and, from the first half of the twentieth century on, increasingly with Catholicism, but also by the missing or at least marginal secular-modernizing narrative. ³ One of the consequences of this situation was that, unlike the Czech situation, in Slovakia there were no conditions for the development of eugenic plans and efforts for “national healing.” ⁴

At the same time, the heritage of the romantic ethnic nationalism did not exclude protoracist stereotypes, in fact, quite the contrary was true. This concerned both the perception of one's own nation as a kind of extended family in terms of blood-relationship and the projections of national enemies, especially Hungarians and Jews. ⁵ Social-Darwinist notions of the struggle for survival, which began to spread in the late nineteenth century within the Hungarian official nationalism and also indirectly influenced non-Hungarian national movements, also followed older stereotypes of “national death,” i.e., fears of being absorbed by other ethnic groups, which had accompanied both the Slovak and Hungarian national movements since their romantic beginnings. ⁶ Controversies around the so-called Magyarization of non-Hungarian nationalities therefore often used metaphors of racial mixing, the negative paradigm of which, along with the development of political Antisemitism, became the “Jewish race.” ⁷

After the turn of the century and especially after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic after the First World War, the anti-Hungarian and anti-Jewish traditions of Slovak nationalism acquired a markedly confessional character. Hlinka's Slovak People's Party (HSĽS) became the strongest political force, combining the legacy of Hungarian political Catholicism with ethnic Slovak nationalism in the spirit of anti-liberal “cultural wars” from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. ⁸ While culture wars were originally fought over the state's interference in the competencies of the churches, in the inter-war period, the issues of the family came to the fore in the spirit of the Catholic doctrine of natural law.

Eugenic discourse began to influence Slovak Catholic nationalism only in the second half of the 1930s. The initiative did not come from its own traditions, but represented a slightly delayed response to the tendencies of European Catholicism: on the one hand to the official, moderate line of the Vatican with its prioritizing of family issues and on the other hand to Catholic radicals led by the theologian and eugenicist Friedrich Muckermann. ⁹

But a specific feature of the Slovak case is the fact that the Catholic clergy was part of the “national revolution” in the autumn of 1938, when, as a result of the break-up of Czechoslovakia, the HSĽS established a one-party regime in Slovakia and its representatives signaled to Nazi Germany their willingness to cooperate. The Catholic priest Jozef Tiso became the chairman of the autonomous Slovak government, which, in line with the expectations of the Catholic Church, placed great emphasis on family policy in its program statement.

Positive Eugenics and National Revolution

Tiso, who became president in the summer of 1939, had already announced in a statement issued by the autonomous government at the beginning of the same year that he would meet the requirements of the Catholic Church, which wanted the Slovak State to return to her competencies it had lost during the First Czechoslovak Republic but also to support family policy in terms of “Catholic modern.” ¹⁰ James Chappel uses this term to describe the modernization of Catholicism, which consisted in recognizing the reality of the secular state, resulting in the retreat of religion to the private sphere—although in the case of the Slovak state this can only be spoken of conditionally. This modernization shift was ideologically based on anti-communism, which was to be guaranteed by the state, even though in the 1930s and 1940s it was mostly an authoritarian and fascist state. Most European Catholics expected the state to defend their “human rights,” which Catholic “paternalists” identified with the interests of the traditional family.

In 1930, Pope Pius XI codified the modernization shift of interwar Catholicism by reducing the demands on the state to defend the “human rights” of the traditional family in the encyclical Casti connubii about Christian marriage. Through him, the Church continued to deny the state control over the institution of marriage, but at the same time asked the state to support the family, on which “the happiness and well-being of the nation” depended. ¹¹ All this resulted in efforts to promote higher birthrates and the cult of the mother, which, for example in interwar Austria, where a dictatorship that sought to achieve legitimacy by appealing to the Catholic faith was established in the 1930s, mingled with nationalist visions of population growth and a fear of the “death of the nation.” ¹²

These visions were usually accompanied by eugenic efforts—The Catholic Church has modernized in this respect as well, even though Chappel does not mention it. In the encyclical Casti connubii, Pius XI rejected the artificial interventions of the state into the “natural order” such as through abortion and sterilization, but he did not reject the need to care for the health of the population—on the contrary, he considered the promotion of healthy offspring to be essentially “reasonable.” In addition, by distinguishing between valuable and less valuable sections of society, he sanctioned notions of hereditary inequality.

The establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in the years 1919 to 1920 was accompanied by the eugenic practice of premarital examination, which provoked criticism from religious elites, who saw Christian morality as the best guarantee of national health. The relevant provision did not finally come into law, and the whole debate flared up again in the mid-1930s. After the adoption of laws sanctioning eugenic sterilizations in several countries, including the hitherto toughest act, Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses of 14 July 1933 in Nazi Germany, the issue began to be discussed again in Czechoslovakia. ¹³ In 1936 and 1937, the Eugenics Society even proposed a law on forced sterilization that would prevent “defective” individuals from mostly lower, working-class urban backgrounds from having children, while promoting “counter-selection,” which was in the “collective interest to ensure the quality of the nation's future generations.” ¹⁴ An important role was played by the fact that the birth rate in the Czech Lands was significantly lower than in the east of the country, in Slovakia and “Subcarpathian Russia”, whose population, however, was largely considered degenerate in Czech professional circles. ¹⁵

Although these proposals were not translated into legal form, the discussion itself again provoked criticism from Catholic circles. The professor of theology at Charles University in Prague, Karel Kadlec, strongly condemned sterilization in the spirit of the encyclical Casti connubii. ¹⁶ However, even Kadlec did not protest against the generally accepted assumption in eugenic circles that degenerated individuals reproduce faster than others. According to him, the solution was the isolation of degenerates in special institutions and especially the raising of the birthrate of healthy strata through “positive measures” to improve living standards. ¹⁷

In Slovakia, the pediatrician Alojz Ján Chura commented on this issue, and in 1936 he published the first volume of his extensive work Slovensko bez dorastu (Slovakia without Offspring). With his book, Chura responded to the decline in birthrates that followed the baby boom after the First World War and the subsequent epidemics, especially the Spanish flu. Chura was well aware of the many causes of this state of affairs, but he did not forget to emphasize those that, according to widespread conservative and nationalist attitudes, were related to social and cultural modernization, primarily the erosion of the traditional family, accompanied by the spread of “extramarital sexual intercourse”. ¹⁸ Chura finds the causes of the declining birth rate in closely intertwined phenomena such as the growing prosperity that capitalism strives for with the help of liberal ideology. Chura was directly influenced by the concept of Karel Kadlec, who summarized the causes of phenomena such as state-controlled sterilization in his book Racionalizace života (Rationalization of Life). The epicenter of these tendencies, according to Chura—and other cultural pessimists of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century—is the modern city as opposed to unspoiled nature. ¹⁹

Closely related to “rationalization” is another factor directly affecting the decline in birthrates, namely the employment of women and the alleged suppression of the reproductive function of sexuality. ²⁰ However, Chura was not only a cultural pessimist and conservative, but—and thus different from Karel Kadlec—also a nationalist. The decline in birthrates was not only a problem of specific families, but of the whole nation, its competitiveness, and even physical survival. According to Chura, children from large families are more enterprising and resilient, while only children and children from two-child families are unwilling to live or die for their nation. This memento is addressed primarily to the Czechs “with their pathological decline in births, which is unprecedented for Slavic nations.” ²¹ Chura saw Slovaks as having a much brighter future ahead of them because they had not lost their sense of family.

In the second volume of the work Slovakia without Offspring from 1938, Chura dealt directly with eugenics, which he divided into negative and positive categories. Instead of artificially targeting and preventing “inferior” births, Chura demanded support for a general increase in birthrates, as quantity, he maintained, would eventually generate quality and hereditary diseases would not jeopardize this process. Using the analogy of the decline of ancient Rome, Chura blamed civilization and large, modern cities, from where the decay of morality and the family—resulting in a decline in birthrates—spread to the hitherto unspoiled countryside. The moment the common people stop “supplying” the living material of the elite, death creeps into the national sanctuary.

Therefore, in the interest of a consensus on natural inequality, which he said was disturbed only by the Enlightenment and egalitarianism of the nineteenth century, Chura does not propose the elimination of hereditary disabilities (negative eugenics), but instead promotes “carrying out positive eugenic efforts, in particular against infertility and insufficient fertility (…) in those social strata that include the greatest bearers of high-value hereditary foundations, by increasing their marriage and birth rates.” ²² According to Chura, sterilization, abortion, or even “euthanasia” represent a return to “pagan, barbaric, and ancient methods of saving humanity.” ²³ Nevertheless, Chura also argues that “the community should be so guided and brought up that no one should marry a person who has been diagnosed as defective.” ²⁴

Chura did not consider the practical realization of positive eugenics—unlike Karel Kadlec, who in accordance with the encyclical Casti connubii promoted “premarital counseling centers,” which were established mainly in Germany and Austria. ²⁵ One aim of this counseling was to inform future spouses about the risk of hereditary diseases and to exclude the “defective” partner from marriage. ²⁶

In its statement, the government of the autonomous Slovakia, led by Tiso, promised to set up “eugenic counseling centers” because, in the words of Professor Štefan Faith of the Catholic Theological Faculty in Bratislava, “it is the duty of young people to regulate their lust and to struggle until they can have a healthy marriage.” ²⁷ Faith profiled himself in the Catholic Theological Faculty as an expert in eugenics, because “the spiritual shepherd must also be equipped with this knowledge.” ²⁸ Like the authorities he referred to—German theologians Friedrich Muckermann and Wilhelm Schmidt ²⁹ —Faith regarded the encyclical Casti connubii as a document of “Christian eugenics,” but interpreted it in the context of the national revolution in autonomous Slovakia: “The deepest meaning of the encyclical, then, is that it seeks to ensure strong and healthy offspring, both in the interests of the child himself and in the interests of the family and the nation.” ³⁰ It is not just that sick children are a burden to the family, they also slow down “the best-equipped natural life,” its development and prosperity. Since artificial interventions such as sterilization and abortions were not allowed by Catholicism in any way, Faith emphasized the importance of prevention. Responsibility in the first place means responsibility for the nation: “He who loves his nation will understand that he must regulate and educate his lust if it tries to recommend a marriage that would mean unhappiness in the history of the family and the nation. He will forbear and overcome his desires until he finds the opportunity to start a healthy and hereditarily perfect family. And he will not forget that he is the son of this nation, and as such, it is his duty and the duty of everyone who starts a family not only to protect but also to improve its health and distinctive character.” ³¹

If there can be renouncing priests, Faith said in the lecture, ordinary Slovaks must be able to do the same. The state, he maintained, had no right to pass laws contrary to the natural law, and to kill the fetus in the mother's body for eugenic reasons, even though “the fate of those who come into the world sick or syphilitic is regrettable.” ³²

We have no information on whether eugenic counseling centers were actually set up later in the Slovak state. In any case, the emphasis on national health played an important role in the mobilization phase of the national revolution. Shortly before the proclamation of the Slovak state in March 1939, the regime announced the establishment of a state health institute, headed by the physician and playwright Ivan Stodola. As in other areas, the ideological influence of Nazism soon began to manifest itself in the health sector, which was in stark contrast to the declared, even constitutionally enshrined, “Christian character” of the Slovak state, which placed marriage, family and motherhood under the “heightened protection of the rule of law.” ³³ Thus, in contrast to the “solution of the Jewish question,” the state took into account the attitudes of the Catholic Church in the area of ​​national health. ³⁴ In doing so, both the state and the church appealed to religiously tinged notions of motherhood as a guarantee of national health and reproduction.

Between Population Growth and Sexual Puritanism: The Museum of Hygiene

In the summer of 1940, representatives of the Slovak-German Society visited Dr. Ján Straka, the health officer at the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak State. The Slovak-German society, which set itself the goal of enhancing cooperation between Slovaks and their “master protectors” from Nazi Germany, paradoxically could not find a field of activity after its establishment in 1939. ³⁵ Its representatives saw a new opportunity arise after a meeting took place between Adolf Hitler and Slovak politicians, led by President Jozef Tiso, in the summer of 1940, which led strengthened the so-called radical wing around the founder of the Slovak-German Society, Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka, and the commander of the Hlinka Guard, Alexander Mach. Tuka subsequently announced the building of “Slovak National Socialism,” which, according to the HSĽS ideologues, was to combine the social elements of Nazism with Catholicism and Slovak nationalism. ³⁶

One of the manifestations of this effort was cooperation in the field of culture and education. A successful exhibition of the Dresden Museum of Hygiene on the essence of human life was being prepared in Slovakia, which centered around the vision of a “New Man” overflowing with good health. It featured the famous exhibit of the “transparent man” (Der gläserne Mensch), whose adorned organs were presented under a special foil so they could be admired by visitors. ³⁷ When representatives of the Slovak-German society recommended Slovak schools visit the exhibition, however, Dr. Straka reacted in a negative way, because the genitals of the “transparent man” were allegedly on display. An assurance by the head of the health department at the Ministry of the Interior that the genitals would not be “illuminated” did not help change the minds of church officials. The bishop's chair prohibited school-age children from attending the exhibition, which, in addition to the genitals, also included pictures of embryos. After representatives of the Slovak-German society expressed surprise at such a “backsliding attitude,” Dr. Straka added that the official guide to the exhibition, according to which “we do not know where life comes from,” represented “heresy” and that bishops would never allow the booklet. ³⁸

In this case, the state bowed to the dictates of the church. Indeed, the publishers of the guide on the Dresden exhibition took into account the objections of church leaders: “The origin and purpose of life are clearly determined by our Christian worldview and its principles.” ³⁹ The columnist of the HSĽS newspaper Slovák (The Slovak) expressed a similar opinion, according to which “only God gives us the answer to questions about the origin of life”. ⁴⁰ On the other hand, the main attraction of the exhibition, the “transparent man,” was given a place of honor: in the preserved black and white photograph, he is illuminated from below and the genitals are not covered. The exhibition Man – Miracle of Life moved from the capital Bratislava to several other Slovak towns. It was visited by tens of thousands of people, schools received discounted train fares, and overall it can be said that the exhibition was a phenomenal success.

The success of the exhibition on the agrarian and, from the German point of view, backward Slovakia had an unexpected end. Because the Führer, according to official propaganda, had “donated the state to the Slovaks,” the director of the Dresden Museum of Hygiene showed unusual generosity. On his initiative and at German expense, the Slovak Museum of Hygiene was established in 1941, a scaled-down copy of the Dresden original, which moved into the Baroque building of the former barracks on the site of today's Slovak National Gallery on the Danube embankment, where it operated until 1945. Exhibits and simulations, which were at that time technologically advanced, informed about the human body, the function of individual organs, but also about physical disorders and diseases that had to be avoided. There was also ideology and propaganda: in the main room, busts of the HSĽS leaders and Hitler were displayed, along with paramilitary Hlinka guard flags. ⁴¹

While the mystery of life in the Christian spirit was the subject of controversy and, finally, of the successful intervention of its administrators, there was clearly agreement among the Catholic conservatives as well as the National Socialists from the Slovak-German society about the actual message of the pamphlet for the Dresden exhibition: “It is the duty of every person to take care of their health. Where there is a healthy individual, the family as well as the community and the nation are healthy. The sick nation withers, dies, dies like an unhealthy tree. A healthy nation is strong, evolving, and powerful. A healthy nation also has a healthy spirit, it can work, create, race, and therefore it will not get lost under the sun and no one will erase it from history. Only he who is healthy has the right to life, because his is the zeal, the courage, the will. It is the duty of every human being, every member of the nation, to realize this and to stand in the battle against the unhealthy and its germs.” ⁴²

The extent to which these views were widespread in the environment of Slovak Catholicism, but at the same time their limits, are shown by the attitude of the Slovak bishops, which the section chief Dr. Straka gave as an illustration to representatives of Slovak-German society. He particularly pointed at the propaganda poster by Andrej Kováčik for the Slovak Youth Care Center, depicting a mother breastfeeding a child. Both figures are dressed in traditional costumes and the mother has exposed most of the breast. In the background is a map of Slovakia and below the image, on a white background, a red-blue inscription shines: “A healthy child in the family, a healthy citizen in the village, a healthy nation in the country, such a nation will not perish!” ⁴³ Above the nationalist motif of a mother nursing an infant, a Madonna with a child, hovering on a cloud and sending beneficial rays to her nation, watches in the upper right corner, while in the upper left corner a double cross stands on a triple hill, the Slovak coat of arms.

In this case, however, the attempt to synthesize Catholicism with nationalism did not bear fruit. After the protest of the episcopal office in Bratislava, the leaflet was withdrawn from circulation. Not because of a fundamental disagreement with the mixing of religion and nationalism, but because of the half-exposed breast of a nursing mother, which, according to a German agent, had caused general amusement in Slovakia. ⁴⁴ The Nazi intelligence report suggested that Slovak society did not identify with the reactionary aspects of the Catholic worldview, such as the backlash against sex education. Although the Church had reservations about the naked exhibits at the hygiene exhibition, it did not object to the educational character of the exhibition. There was a similar consensus about the cult of the mother, as expressed in Kováčik's poster, which captures the intersections between religious and nationalist ideas about the traditional family as the basic building unit of society.

The Cult of the Mother and the Law on “Fetal Protection”

After the adoption of the constitution and the election of the Catholic priest Tiso as president, the Slovak bishops officially issued a pastoral letter in the summer of 1939, in which they declared loyalty to the new state and promised to “maintain and magnify this gift of God”. ⁴⁵ Right at the outset, they expressed relief at being spared the alleged threat that the Slovak nation “will be fragmented, torn, crushed like never before, perhaps even erased as a nation.” ⁴⁶ This dark vision was not only fulfilled, on the contrary, the light of freedom shone on the Slovaks—although only in the shadow of the Third Reich. The enthusiasm of the pastors of Slovak Catholics was so great that they considered Slovak nation and its state truly chosen to show the right path to others. ⁴⁷

In the eyes of the Slovak bishops, family policy was one of the primary preconditions for the realization of this task. The family was to remain the domain of women, who were to take care of children and be the support of busy men. The authoritarian state was to reverse the unfavorable trend associated—although not explicitly in the pastoral letter—with the two decades of the existence of the democratic Czechoslovak Republic: “We are painfully observing that, in recent decades, many spouses have found it easy to sin against the holiness of the family, that the number of children decreased, and the inseparable marital bond began to be released, a condition for the upbringing of children and thus a necessary condition for social and state life. We therefore call out: Back to the old Christian principles!” ⁴⁸

This call was heard by state officials, led by Tiso, in a declaration of the autonomous government of November 19, 1938, where the family was presented “as the basic cell of the state and society in general.” ⁴⁹ Section 86 of the Constitution of July 21, 1939, placed marriage, family, and motherhood under “enhanced protection of the rule of law.” ⁵⁰ Hand in hand with this statute went a reassessment of the position of women, whose social function was to fulfill their reproductive duties. Like other authoritarian regimes invoking Catholicism, such as the already mentioned Austrian dictatorship in the years 1933 to 1938, the Slovak state began to intensively cultivate the cult of the mother. For this purpose, HSĽS politicians used the May Mother's Day, also taken from the first Czechoslovakia. From 1940, Mother's Day was extended to Slovak Family Day, Christian academies were established, artists were to compose odes, and the state apparatus was actively involved in the celebrations. In accordance with the eugenic principle of Chura, according to which quantity itself generates quality, mothers who gave birth to as many children as possible were especially celebrated. In May 1943, President Tiso received a delegation of women who had given birth to more than ten children. In his speech, Tiso assured that “the Slovak nation does not have to be afraid of depopulation, extinction, because you Slovak mothers form the basis of healthy, God-fearing and moral families.” ⁵¹ The awarded mothers received a decree with the following wording: “The Hlinka's Slovak People's Party is indebted to you for your dedication and effort, by which you have raised multiple children for the Slovak nation.” ⁵²

The HSĽS regime also wanted to stimulate the birth rate by increasing family allowances. While in the First Czechoslovak Republic the state paid support for two children, in the Slovak state it was extended to all children born. At the same time, the state was interested in “returning” working women to the household, where they were to focus exclusively on raising children and managing the household. One of the most visible restrictions on women's rights during the Slovak state was the decree that married female teachers be banned from practicing their profession, as a result of which the Minister of Education Jozef Sivák promised to “return the woman to the family (…), to give children back their mothers and to support the birthrate.” ⁵³

In fact, even members of the Catholic Union of Slovak Women had a hard time bearing such a ban on their professional lives. This professional organization was not entirely under the influence of official propaganda and, despite its conservative values, it did not intend to accept the passive role dictated to women by the HSĽS. Members of the Catholic Union of Slovak Women, on the one hand, promoted Chura's lectures—in May 1940, incidentally, framed by the aforementioned poster of a breastfeeding mother with a half-exposed breast—but on the other hand, they did not hesitate to publish critical letters from married teachers, who as a result of the new law, had lost their jobs and a beloved profession and needed to share the pain of this. ⁵⁴ Moreover, after 1940, girls and boys went to school separately, which enabled the HSĽS to meet another program priority.

However, the cult of the mother did not mean peaceful anticipation of the fruits of population growth. While some politicizing priests appealed to the sacrifice of women, their more radical colleagues continued to preach of an imminent national death. In the spirit of official antisemitic ideology, Jews, specifically Jewish doctors, were accused of carrying out abortions of Slovak children. ⁵⁵ Prime Minister Tuka declared this “evil” struggle in the program statement from the autumn of 1939. ⁵⁶ At the end of 1940, a law on “fetal protection” began to be prepared.

In Slovakia, abortions had been banned since the time of the Habsburg Monarchy. Exceptions were made only in cases where the pregnancy endangered the health or life of the mother, which needed confirmation from a doctor. Neither the legislative initiatives of the deputies of the socialist parties nor the government's draft law of 1932, which provided for exceptions for certain social, health, or eugenic indications, changed anything. ⁵⁷ Prime Minister Tuka justified the demand to tighten the law by denouncing exceptions based on health indications, arguing, from the point of view of population policy, that reproduction was vital for the nation. However, the ensuing debate was marked by moral and religious arguments.

It took the Office of the Government more than a year to draw up and, in December 1940, to submit a bill on “crimes against life and its origin.” The proposal was to improve the valid Czechoslovak standard, which did not specify in which cases abortions are allowed. The new bill in principle prohibited abortion, but in the event of a serious threat to the life of a pregnant woman, it explicitly allowed an exception, albeit only under professional supervision and in the relevant medical facilities.

However, after requesting expert opinions, a commission composed of professors of the Faculty of Medicine of the Slovak University—the pediatrician Chura was also a member—proposed a completely new wording of the law. The Commission agreed that “fetal life is human life” and rejected “fetal killing without exception.” ⁵⁸ The doctors thus sided with the Catholic theologians, for whom non-interference with the natural order was the foundation of family life. According to the Commission, the only available “induced labor” was premature birth, “and only in cases where a pregnancy has advanced to the stage when it is hoped that the life of the fetus could be saved.” ⁵⁹

At a joint meeting of state authorities and experts organized by the Ministry of Justice in early 1941, several amendments to the draft by the Medical Commission did not pass, such as the claim that medical indications for induced abortion did not exist. Public authorities could rely on the views of experts from other fields, in particular law. For example, Antonín Rališ, a professor of criminal law at the former Comenius University, now the Slovak University, agreed in principle with a general ban on abortions. Rhetorically, he subscribed to modern eugenics in a different, more original sense than Chura, but limited his demand—“not soulless quantity, but good quality”—to the area of ​​prevention. Nevertheless, he agreed with the draft law. Referring to the German model, he even proposed extending the draft to allow the possibility of abortion in the event of a serious threat to the health of a pregnant woman. ⁶⁰

Alexander Spesz from the Catholic Theological Faculty in Bratislava was invited as another expert. He basically adopted the arguments of “our leading doctors,” as the Katolícke noviny (Catholic News) positively referred to them. ⁶¹ In this journal, directed by the Catholic Press Office, an aggressive campaign against abortions was launched in the spring of 1941. The twentieth century was “baptized” from the century of the child (according to Ellen Key's pedagogical bestseller ⁶² ) to the “century of child murders.” This belief was placed above the valid legal order in the unsigned editorial of the Katolícke noviny. ⁶³

And it was Spesz, along with allies from the Faculty of Medicine, led by Chura, who insisted that, in the law on “fetal protection,” paragraphs concerning the legality or impunity of abortions in the event of endangering the lives of pregnant women should be removed. Commenting on these paragraphs, Spesz wrote that they contradict both the principles of Christian morality and the demand for population growth. ⁶⁴ Spesz was an avid reader of the Italian sociologist Ferdinand Loffredo, a leading “fascist ideologue of social policy.” ⁶⁵ Loffredo proclaimed the need for close interconnection and cooperation between the totalitarian state and the Catholic Church in matters of social policy, because this was the only way to prevent the “population decadence” brought about by capitalism and urbanism, more specifically, the disintegration of the traditional family. The ideologues of the Mussolini regime, adhering to the Catholic doctrine codified in the encyclical Casti Connubii of 1930, agreed in the belief that man as the “head” and woman as the “heart” of the family were the only guarantee of population growth. It is therefore understandable that this clerical-fascist symbiosis also resonated in Slovakia. ⁶⁶

In the end, Spesz's reservations were successful because they were shared by the doctors on the expert committee. Women's health considerations had to take a back seat, or more precisely, women had to sacrifice themselves, and not just in extreme situations. Spesz considered it quite natural that women should deny themselves pleasures—“hedonism” was, according to him, the main cause of the declining birth rate, of course especially for women. Men can indulge in fun, such as smoking, but women cannot. Referring to the aforementioned clerical-fascist ideologue Loffredo, Spesz denies women “spiritual autarky,” that is, independence: “Against this, the Church especially recommends to women modesty, demureness, simplicity, inner life, which are primarily motherly virtues.” ⁶⁷ The fact that this sacrifice was not only an imperative of the church, but also of militant nationalism and a totalitarian state, was very clearly expressed by the draftsman of the law on fetal protection, MP Vojtech Tvrdý, after it was adopted by the Slovak Parliament. According to Tvrdý, “many occupations impose on citizens the duty of heroism and possibly also the sacrifice of life. Marriage and motherhood are a holy vocation, which also requires heroism and, if necessary, a sacrifice of life. Therefore, every Slovak Christian and every mother who gives birth can only agree with the new Slovak law on the protection of the fetus of life, which is a good means of healing the Slovak family and nation in the Christian spirit of our Constitution and in the spirit of Slovak National Socialism.” ⁶⁸

However, Spesz was unable to enforce everything he set out to do. He simply refused paragraph 6 about the criminal punishment for the production and dissemination of means, “that serve exclusively against conception” because “Christian morality does not allow a distinction between means ‘that serve exclusively against conception’ and means ‘that are also intended to protect against sexually transmitted diseases’.” ⁶⁹ The background of Spesz's objection provided the belief—also rooted in the papal encyclical Casti connubii—that sexuality has an exclusively reproductive function. Every act of sexual intercourse is to “naturally” end in pregnancy (except in natural circumstances such as barren days. Unlike Pope Pius XI, Spesz does not mention this). “The feeling of pleasure in these acts is only a brilliant incentive to achieve this goal,” Spesz wrote in a theological study on the advantages of Catholicism for population growth. “So, he who seeks pleasure and excludes the goal set by nature and God is hard to blame.” ⁷⁰ Spesz did not hesitate to describe the ways in which this happens. (As a Catholic priest, he felt competent in this regard, as he said sex education was to be conducted solely in the context of confession.) More than the “unnatural” sin and perversion that the Sodomites are said to have committed, he is interested in “masturbation or neo-Malthusianism, which, while maintaining affection for the opposite sex and in a natural way, ultimately thwarts the act.” ⁷¹

The already cited pediatrician Chura commented on the issue of contraception, too—and also in this case he agreed with Karel Kadlec. Chura claimed that masturbation and thus interrupted intercourse were harmful to health. ⁷² Like Kadlec, Chura was against the promoting of contraception. Chura again contrasts the corrupt city with the purity of the countryside and speculates on the forces allegedly hidden behind the veneer of the industry and advertising, especially for condoms. ⁷³

Chura, who had a problem even with girls’ gymnastics due to the possibility that it could premature awaken girls’ sexuality, ⁷⁴ has seen the desired change after the change of regime and the declaration of the Slovak state. The text of the circular of the Central State Security of April 1940 entitled “Offensive advertising of contraceptives,” which was addressed to the chief officials of the state administration, with its diction and wording strikingly recalls the complaints of Chura in his work Slovakia without Offspring. According to the head of state security, condoms in particular were promoted “very conspicuously, even by illuminated signs.” At this stage, the authorities did not yet dare to remove the advertisement directly, in the form of a decree, but by summoning the salesmen to explain “that it is undesirable from the point of view of public peace for contraceptives to be conspicuously advertised and by asking them to remove this”. ⁷⁵

Disputes over the word “exclusively” from the bill on fetal protection, which banned the sale and distribution of contraceptives, continued at a joint parliamentary committee meeting on 25 March 1941. While the professors of the Faculty of Medicine agreed with the objections of their colleagues from the Catholic Theological Faculty, Rališ from the Faculty of Law requested that the entire paragraph be deleted with the following justification: “The current provision of § 6 leads to the principle: the only marital intercourse that should be allowed is that which is intended for the purpose of childbirth. It is a principle that is completely impossible, and not always desirable, given the generally medically recognized importance of sexual intercourse for the health of a marriage.” ⁷⁶

In the end, however, it was neither the objections of conservative doctors and theologians, nor Rališ's liberal arguments that determined the wording of the law, but the pragmatic approach of state bodies and legislators. The draftsman of the law on fetal protection, Vojtech Tvrdý, exempted from criminal sanctions those cases of the spread and use of contraceptives that were supposed to protect against sexually transmitted diseases. The law thus indirectly legalized prostitution, which was not just a normal daily routine. Due to the deployment of Slovak soldiers in the war against the Soviet Union, this issue soon led to an important supply problem, which the army commanders were able to solve only on their own. In his efforts to secure condoms for the force, Viliam Kraus, head of the pharmacy administration at the Ministry of Defense, came across a misunderstanding among ministerial officials. They tried to convince the soldiers of the effectiveness of prophylactic measures to adequately protect them from syphilis and gonorrhea. Arguments that hospital treatment would cost significantly more and that soldiers would also infect the civilian population eventually helped, along with—as almost always—a reference to the German example (German soldiers had easy access to condoms). The problem, surprisingly, was finding a supplier, as the military order was not negligible: 200,000 condoms worth more than 800,000 crowns. The soldiers were to cover the costs from their salary, thus the state eventually profited from these prohibited goods. An alternative was to consider setting up field brothels, but this idea did not materialize, not least because Slovak soldiers were expected to prefer a “serious” relationship with “related” Slavic girls and women. ⁷⁷

Conclusions

Despite the proclaimed “national revolution” in the autumn of 1938, Catholic Slovak nationalism found itself in crisis in the first years of the Slovak state's existence. On the one hand, Nazi Germany's “forced protection” (Schutzherrschaft) was seen as a guarantee of “national survival”: Catholic priest Tiso, prime minister and later president, thanked Adolf Hitler until the end of his political career for holding his protective hand over Slovakia and Slovaks. ⁷⁸ After 1940, when Tiso competed with the radical, pro-German wing of the HSĽS, religious elements increasingly disappeared from his “Christian National Socialism,” not least through a radical nationalist or even fascist transformation of the Church's social doctrine. ⁷⁹

At the same time, a certain tension began to appear in the loyalty of the representatives of the Catholic clergy. The Episcopate and the theological leaders welcomed the establishment of the Slovak state with great enthusiasm, due to the new government's promise to unconditionally support family policy in accordance with Catholic doctrine. At the same time, however, the dialectic of national revolution caused church leaders to share fantasies of national growth and health, and for this reason they, in principle, welcomed eugenics, albeit, of course, within the limits set by the Vatican. However, the following attempts to establish secular eugenics within the Slovak “national sanctuary” were rejected, as we have seen through the debate on hygienic exhibitions and museums. ⁸⁰

Despite the tensions, the HSĽS regime met the expectations of the Catholic Church to a large extent. In addition to the renewal of Christian education, this mainly concerned family policy, which was initially aimed at improving the social situation of families with children. Its foundations, however, were not only theologically based, but also ideologically motivated, which was evident in the reasoning given for the drafting and adoption of the law on “fetal protection.” The regime's attachment to Catholicism is underscored by the fact that primary religious and ethical arguments were made when justifying the ban on abortions and the ban on contraception, and the references to positive eugenics were not explicit. The nationalist and fascist fears of national death and invocations for national revival appeared only at the announcement and immediately before the adoption of the law in the Slovak Parliament. The fight against the abortions in Slovakia therefore did not sound as relentless as, for example, in the Independent State of Croatia, where draconian punishments for abortions were proposed. ⁸¹

The approach towards fundamental aspects of family policy such as birth control by the HSĽS regime, which in this case worked closely with the Catholic clergy, shed new light on the intertwining of Slovak nationalism and Catholicism in the first years of the Slovak state. Ideological innovations such as racial hygiene did not prevail, either among the clergy or in population policy, despite its explicit pronatalism. These facts are striking, especially in comparison with the policy of antisemitism and the so-called “solution” of the “Jewish question,” where, under pressure from Nazi Germany and despite criticism from the Catholic and Evangelical clergy, a racist definition of Jews was adopted. This discrepancy comes to the fore even more when we realize that the so-called negative eugenics measures affected the German minority in Slovakia. It is not known whether the Slovak Episcopate criticized the deportation of more than 600 “hereditarily ill” Germans from Slovakia to the Reich in a manner similar to the Nazi interference in their church education. ⁸² Admittedly, bishops may not have known that many of the deported were sterilized there, ⁸³ but the crucial point seems to be that education and family policy were absolute priorities of Catholic policy. In this, the HSĽS regime accommodated the Church where it could – however, without any impact on the German minority, since the latter was subordinate to Berlin.

Such contradictions seem to confirm the finding that Slovak politicians, who referred to Catholicism, retained a relatively large “degree of autonomy”, despite the dominant influence and also the partial ideological admiration of the Nazi Schutzherrschaft. The result was hybrid ideological constructions and often inconsistent interrelationships between nationalism, Catholicism, and eugenics, as a result of which Slovak actors became entangled in a number of contradictions and dilemmas that proved difficult to resolve. This heritage of the wartime Slovak state can still be felt today. ⁸⁴ When the culture wars flared up in Slovakia after 2000, it was family politics that came to the fore, with the issue of birth control at the forefront. In addition to the protection of the traditional family, this relates in particular to the controversy around abortion regulations, the tightening of which has been debated by the Slovak Parliament several times in recent years. At the same time, on the fringes of the political spectrum, actors have emerged who have begun to link these controversies with pronatalism and attacks against migrants and the European Union. This involves not only the neo-fascist People's Party Our Slovakia, but also conservative Catholic circles and some clerics, led by the priest Marián Kuffa. Their mourning for the millions of Slovak children who have allegedly been murdered since abortion was legalized by the communist regime in 1957 is complemented by appeals to Slovak politicians to save the nation from “genocide” and a flood of colored immigrants. Neither the masses of Slovak voters, nor the representatives of the Catholic Church seem to have realized that they are thus following in the footsteps of their predecessors from the days of the wartime Slovak state.