Creationist Hate Mongering
An editorial in the “The News Record,” a student newspaper associated with the University of Cincinnati by Scout Foust was brought to my attention late in the afternoon on 15 Feb. I was both insulted, and saddened at the gross incompetence and ignorance it represents. Mr. Foust, a fourth year student in German Literature, titled his editorial, Evolution perpetuates racist ideologies: Blacks shouldn’t back evolution.
Scout Foust was allowed to publish a baseless slander of not evolution, which as a science will take no notice, but of the hundreds of thousands of scientists who work and teach in disciplines related to evolutionary theory. Evolution is such a powerful truth that this encompasses nearly every science discipline. The Editors of “The News Record” have failed their responsibility to their readers. Further, such an incompetent article reflects very badly on their newspaper, the University of Cincinnati, and the Department that had the dubious task of educating Mr. Foust. Nor have the Editors done Mr. Foust personally any favor, as he now is exposed as an incompetent on a national level. A few hours of internet research reveals that Mr. Foust’s editorial is little more than a string of creationist sites’ propaganda weakly edited together and presented without attribution. In other words, Mr. Foust is not only incompetent on matters relating to history and science, he is also exposed as a plagiarist.
I am reminded of Augustine of Hippo (Saint Augustine to some), who wrote in his work “The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim),
“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. … Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.” [ italics referred to 1 Timothy 1:7](translation is by J. H. Taylor in “Ancient Christian Writers,” Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.)
Mr. Foust’s ‘argument’ is that evolutionary biology is the origin and justification for racism and genocide, and that by studying evolution one will promote racism. Mr. Foust’s screed makes not one single true statement of fact, and many false statements of fact, and he commits little more than one long error of reasoning, and of history. His historical error is blatant; racism is far older than the theory of evolution. And hisorically, the Bible has been used far longer as justification of slavery and racism and religious persecutions and murders than any science. His first logical error is ad hominem, reasoning that if he could link something vile with individuals he can then discredit any other idea associated with them. His second is that finding unpleasant- even horrible- application of a scientific theory or philosophical argument invalidates the theory. If this were true, nuclear physics which leads to nuclear weapons, or the germ theory of disease which leads to biological warfare would be discredited. This is incompetent sophistry.
Mr. Foust doesn’t Know Black History or Evolution
SF, “If evolution is to be believed, black history would include the notion that blacks are still an inferior race - still evolving, but far behind the evolution of white people.”
False, evolutionary theory, particularly those subdisciplines directly involved with human evolution make no such claim. This is a lie. There are biological differences that can be found between human populations. The smaller the biologically related group, the greater are their similarities. Families very often share medical problems that are genetically linked. Humans reproductively isolated within small geographic regions will share many genes. But, every time that anyone tries to extend the analysis to large geographic scales, or to truly significant numbers of variables, the concept of human races fails as a biologically valid concept. I can only offer a brief view of the current understanding of modern evolutionary biology, and anthropology’s understanding of human “race.” Richard Lewontin (1974), “The Genetic Basis Of Evolutionary Change.” New York: Columbia University Press, concluded, “Human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of social and human relations. Since such racial classification is now seen to be of virtually no genetic or taxonomic significance either, no justification can be offered for its continuance.” pg. 397 A few additional highlights from Lewontin’s study are worth careful consideration. Only 6.3 percent of the total genetic variation of 17 human polymorphic traits is explained by race, i.e. the between-group variance. Nearly ninety-four percent of human genetic variation occurs as WITHIN-GROUP variation. In other words, for the variables measured individuals within socially determined categories of “race” were more biologically dissimilar from one another than they were between supposedly seperate “races.” Twenty years later Jia, and Chakraborty (1993) found nearly identical results in a study of DNA markers from 12,000 individuals within 59 ethnic groups. They found that up to 98.5 percent of the observed variance occurred WITHIN subpopulations at the individual level. ( Jia, L and R. Chakraborty 1993 “Extent of Within Versus Between Population Variations of VNTR Polymorphisms in Five Major Human Groups.” American Journal of Human Genetics, 53: Abstract #75). See also Michael Cummings, 1994. “Human Heredity: Principles and Issues. 3rd Edition.” St. Paul:West/Wadsworth “These results indicate that individual variation in DNA profiles overwhelm any interpopulational differences, no matter how the populations are ethnically or racially classified.” (1994, pg. 500. (The fourth edition, 1997, has different pagination).
Strikingly, all this was anticipated by Charles Darwin, who considered all human biological variation he observed in his worldwide travels merely due to differences in climate and diet. For example Darwin, wrote in “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex” (John Murray, London, 1871), “It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.”
Mr. Foust doesn’t Know Charles Darwin
This leads us to Mr. Foust’s next very ignorant and false statements regarding Darwin’s first major evolutionary text, “Origin of Species.” Darwin’s work did not “popularize the notion of “social evolution.” He did not say that Europeans were the “fittest to survive.” Nor did Darwin refer to humans at all in the title of his 1859 book, nor was he a racist. Four more lies, Mr. Foust.
Darwin in the 1850s wrote in what could be called a dated academic style which without practice can be rather thick reading. Ignorant creationists like to draw sinister conclusions from the title of Darwin’s opus, “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” They are apparently clueless that “Race” in Darwin’s use meant formally a grouping below species. This is how it is used by botanists today for local variations found in plants growing in slightly different soils, or varied amounts of sunlight. As there are no extant human subspecies, there is no scientific reference intended by Darwin to human races. Darwin in fact made virtually no mention of humans at all in “The Origin of Species” Further, popular political writing 150 years ago and even later commonly used “race” to mean nationality; we read from those times about the “Irish race” and the “English race.” A literature student should be ashamed to have so little appreciation of how the usage of words changes between formal and informal usages, let alone over the centuries.
Further, Charles Darwin was an ardent abolitionist at a time when many used the Bible to justify slavery. In 1833 he wrote,
“I have watched how steadily the general feeling, as shown at elections, has been rising against Slavery. What a proud thing for England, if she is the first European nation which utterly abolishes it. I was told before leaving England, that after living in slave countries: all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the Negro’s character.” Charles Darwin to Catherine Darwin (May 22 - July 14 1833) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin Vol. 1 1821-1836 (1985), pp. 312-313
In a letter to American Asa Gray, a Christian, noted botanist, and one of Darwin’s scientific supporters, Darwin refered to the Civil War:
“But I suppose you are all too overwhelmed with the public affairs to care for science. I never knew the newspapers so profoundly interesting. N. America does not do England Justice: I have not seen or heard of a soul who is not with the North. Some few, & I am one, even and wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against Slavery. In the long run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. What wonderful times we live in. Massachusetts seems to show noble enthusiasm. Great God how I should like to see the greatest curse on Earth Slavery abolished. “ – Charles Darwin to Asa Gray (June 5, 1861) The Correspondence of Charles Darwin Vol. 9 1861 (1994), p.163.
I recommend the selection of Darwin’s comments regarding race and slavery compiled for the internet by my colleague Troy Britain which I used in part: Darwin on Race.
From “Descent of Man,” Chapter 4, Section 2:
“Slavery, although in some ways beneficial during ancient times, [See Mr. Bagehot, ‘Physics and Politics,’ 1872, p. 72.] is a great crime; yet it was not so regarded until quite recently, even by the most civilised nations. And this was especially the case, because the slaves belonged in general to a race different from that of their masters. As barbarians do not regard the opinion of their women, wives are commonly treated like slaves. “
Mr. Foust doesn’t Know Thomas Huxley
Next, regarding Thomas Huxley, Mr. Foust, and “The News Record” published a heavily redacted ‘quote,’ Foust most likely copied from some creationist website. This practice known as ‘quote mining’ is very popular with creationists. It is also plagiarism by Mr. Foust, who fails to provide his actual sources. They are most certainly not from Huxley (whom I doubt that Mr. Foust has ever read) as this pseudo-quote is from an essay titled, “Emancipation - Black and White” where Huxley is arguing against discrimination toward blacks and women.
SF, “After the 13th Amendment freed the slaves, Huxley said, “No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal… of the white man. And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed… he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried out by thoughts and not by bites.”
The redacted quote is found on numerous creationist and anti-evolution sites, all of which promote the falsehood that evolutionary biology is inherently racist. The earliest presentation in the form used by Mr. Foust I know of was by Henry M. Morris, “Evolution and Modern Racism” IMPACT No. 7 October, 1973. So for at least 30 years this chopped up text has been offered as an ‘evidence’ that evolutionary biology is racist.
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) was considered a radical reformer and anti-racist for his era. Happily, today his views would be challenged. As a young man (unlike Charles Darwin), Huxley had even supported the institution of slavery. In this he was in agreement of such terrible men as Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. In this essay, Huxley is arguing against slavery, and positively for the proposition that whatever the innate capacities of Negros or Caucasions, of males or females, social oppression is inexcusable. Actually the majority of the essay regards the question of women’s emancipation. Below is the quotation in context, it is from an 1865 essay “Emancipation - Black and White”, where Huxley is arguing against social discrimination toward blacks and women. His remarks must be understood in terms of the times they were made, and in the context of his argument. Namely, that even if on average Negros were of lessor ability than Caucasians this could not be used as a justification for slavery, or discriminatory laws.
The bold text is that which is discarded by the creationists :
It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; butno rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal,still less the superior, of theaveragewhite man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well as no oppressor,he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites. The highest places in the hierarchy of civilization will assuredly not be within the reach of our dusky cousins, though it is by no means necessary that they should be restricted to the lowest.
Huxley concluded his remarks on the abolition of slavery with,
“The doctrine of equal natural rights may be an illogical delusion; emancipation may convert the slave from a well-fed animal into a pauperised man; mankind may even have to do without cotton-shirts; but all these evils must be faced if the moral law, that no human being can arbitrarily dominate over another without grievous damage to his own nature, be, as many think, as readily demonstrable by experiment as any physical truth. If this be true, no slavery can be abolished without a double emancipation, and the master will benefit by freedom more than the freed-man. (Huxley “Emancipation-Black and White” 1865, pp. 17-18, from “Collected Essays, vol. III”)
I think that perhaps the best qualified commentor on Thomas Huxley’s attitudes toward racial equality is a contemporary, and strongly partisan abolitionist who certainly would have been highly aware of prejudice on Huxley’s part. Mrs. P. A. Taylor, president of the Ladies London Emancipation Society 1864, wrote for the scoiety, “Professor Huxley on the Negro Question.” There she reviews a series of lectures delivered by Huxley to the Royal College of Surgeons on “The Structure and Classification of the Mammalia.” Two of the nine lectures related to humans. Taylor reports Huxley’s possition that,
“The important question now remains-What is the value of the differences which have been shown to exist in the structure of human beings? This question resolves itself into two others. 1. Are these differences sufficient to justify us in supposing them to indicate distinct species of men? 2. Can any of the deviations be considered as transitional towards the lower forms of animals? In respect to the first, it is certain that well-defined types occur in different geographical localities, so distinct that any zoologist, taking a single example of each, without any other evidence, would probably pronounce them to be distinct species; but the fact that every intermediate form can be found between the most typical, and the absence of any proof of their infertility inter se, conclusively show that there is no sufficient ground for the doctrine of the diversity of species among men. As to the second question, it can be answered equally positively.
And she concluded with this summary,
"”Clearly the high scientific authority of Professor Huxley is against the favourite notion of the partisans of slavery that there are signs about the negro that he has a place of his own in nature inferior to that of the normal man, and against the desired inference that he may fairly have a treatment corresponding to that place, and be excluded from rights and franchises that are agreed upon amongst men. Professor Huxley might have stopped here-for it was not necessary for him to say, as a man of science, what be might consider these rights and franchises to be. He might have vindicated the title of the Negro physiologically to whatever treatment is proper for human beings as such, and yet he might have believed in the necessity and expediency of slavery within that common society of human beings in which he had declared the Negro to be included. But be steps beyond the circle of the physiologist, and speaks strongly and generously his faith as a man. He believes in the doctrine of freedom, or equal personal rights for all men, and he pronounces the system of slavery to be root and branch an abomination-thus making his physiological definition of the ‘Negro‘s place among men equivalent to an earnest plea for Negro emancipation. Nay, as will have been noted, be goes farther, and, in virtue of the strength of his feeling with respect to slavery, avows a state of opinion regarding the American War in which many who share his feeling with respect to slavery will refuse to go along with him.” (Note: Huxley admired the courage of the Southerners in battle, but urged victory of the North when most British viewed a Southern victory as being in Britain’s economic interest.)
Mr. Foust doesn’t Know Amalie Dietrich
The next lie told by Mr. Foust smeared a woman whoes contributions to 19th century science are quite properly highly regarded, Amalie Dietrich. Mr. Foust repeats a lie he picked up I surmise from the creationist organization “Answers in Genesis.” Typically lacking in honest scholarship, they in turn relied merely on a popular Australian television program and freely mixed fact with popular fictions.
SF: “German evolutionist Amalie Dietrich would even visit Australia, asking train station owners to shoot Aborigines so she could “keep the specimens.” It was through this that she received the nickname the “Angel of Black Death.” (Compare with AiG Open season on Aborigines)
Amalie Dietrich, a largely self trained German naturalist, spent the years 1863-1872 in northern Queensland, Au. collecting for the Museum Godeffroy in Hamburg, Germany. Amongst her many accomplishments, she collected, and is credited as the discoverer of many species of plants, insects, and vertebrates. She was the first European (1886) to collect a taipan snake, generally considered today as the most deadly in the world. Her Australian bird collection is still the one of the largest generated by an individual, and contains many holotype specimens.
The entire issue of human remains as specimens with a particular focus on Australian Aboriginal remains and their late 20th century repatriation and destruction is addressed by Paul Turnbull, in “Ancestors, not Specimens: Reflections on the Controversy over the Remains of Aboriginal People in European Scientific Collections,” 1997 The Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History. He comments on the small collection of human remains (eight skeletons, one skull, and one dried skin) sent to Europe by Dietrich.
She travelled coastal Queensland between 1863 and 1872, as a naturalist for the Godeffroy Museum, Hamburg. Oral testimony collected by historian Ray Sumner tells of Dietrich having shocked William Archer, a local pastoralist, by asking his help to obtain the “pelt” of an Aborigine. Archer had his overseer immediately drive his guest back to Rockhampton (Sumner, 1985, pp. 127)
Turnbull continued, “The story passed into local legend, surfacing in H.L. Roth’s 1908 History of Mackay as follows:”
The celebrated Godeffroy Museum…had a collector on the coast from 1863 to 1873, who made several ineffectual efforts to induce squatters to shoot an aboriginal, so that she could send the skeleton to the Museum! On one occasion she asked an officer of the Native Police what he would take to shoot so and so, pointing to one of the Native Black Troopers. She got no human skins nor skeletons from the Mackay district.. (Roth, 1908, p. 81).
It seems unlikely that Dietrich asked Archer or one of his workers to kill an Aborigine. What probably so offended Archer, a humanitarian who had good relations with local Aboriginal people, was Dietrich’s utter insensitivity to mortuary custom. In all probability, Aboriginal people of the Rockhampton district posthumously removed skin, dried it and for some time thereafter reverently carried it about their country. Nonetheless, whatever Archer told Dietrich, she sought and finally managed to procure a dried skin from an unknown location, and a skull from the Rockhampton district. And after befriending the Birri Gubba, she procured eight complete skeletons from near Bowen. Back at the Godeffroy Museum, Dietrich was keen to stress to a fellow worker, Alexander Sokolowsky, how hard it had been to procure the various remains, as the Aboriginal people “practised ancestor worship” (Sumner, 1985, p. 328, see also Sumner 1993 gh) From Turnbull 1997.
Nearly all early anthropologists received at least some medical training in human anatomy. And while we might be surprised today, the dissection of human cadavers was illegal in many parts of the world. The medical students of the early 18th century typically robbed recent graves in order to procure bodies for study. In one instance of personal interest to me, the Medical College of Georgia went so far as to purchase a slave who’s sole duty was to go at night to cemeteries in order to procure bodies. He preserved them in barrels of whiskey which he also sold (the whiskey) on the side. These activities generally created a dismissive attitude, and even disdain of funeral practices. Nor did this promote reverence for the decaying tissues of the dead by medical men and scienists. Nearly every museum in the world had supplied itself with human skeletons removed from graves. Christian missionaries supplied these just as often as anyone, since after all, they were not interfering with Christian burials or Christian burial practices. There can be little doubt that Dietrich acquired the human remains in the same manner.
Paul Turnbull 1997 “Ancestors, not Specimens: Reflections on the Controversy over the Remains of Aboriginal People in European Scientific Collections.” The Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History.
Roth, H.L. 1908. “History of Mackay,” Halifax: King.
Sumner, R. 1985 “Amalie Dietrich in Australia”, Brisbane: unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Queensland
_____ 1993 “WOMAN IN THE WILDERNESS: THE STORY OF AMALIE DIETRICH,” The University of New South Wales Press
Mr. Foust doesn’t Know German History!
Mr. Foust asserted that , “… true evolutionists should praise Hitler’s efforts.” This is personally insulting and outrageous. If I thought that Mr. Foust possessed any honor or was capable of shame, I would demand an apology. And for a ‘student’ of German literature, his claim is remarkably incompetent. If Hitler tried to draw rhetorical support from Social Darwinism or evolution, this position is little evident from the text of “Mein Kampf,” and in any event, was merely a twig on the trunk of his anti-Semitism. Hitler’s opposition to what he considered a Marxist threat is not drawn from Darwin, and in any event was more a rationalization of his religious bigotry than its origin. Further, direct evidence from multiple statements by Hitler supports the observation that the theoretical inspiration Hitler drew from was not evolution, but the Germ Theory of Disease, and Christianity. For example, consider the following where we have Hitler, in his argument to Hungary’s Admiral Horthy, invoking not a übermench racist position, but an anti-Bolshevik, and nationalist one,
“The minutes [taken by Dr. Paul Otto Schmidt] for the second day’s meeting, on 17 April 1943, recorded a statement by Ribbentrop, in Hitler’s presence, to a point made by Horthy: “On Horthy’s retort, what should he do with the Jews then, after he had pretty well taken all means of living from them– he surely couldn’t beat them to death– the Reich Foreign Minister [Ribbentrop] replied that the Jews must either be annihilated or taken to concentration camps. There is no other way.”
Hitler almost immediately confirmed Ribbentrop’s explicitly murderous statement at some length: Hitler: “Where the Jews were left to themselves, as for example in Poland, gruesome poverty and degeneracy had ruled. They were just pure parasites. One had fundamentally cleared up this state of affairs in Poland. If the Jews there didn’t want to work [in Third Reich concentration camps], they were shot. If they couldn’t work they had to perish. They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, from which a healthy body could be infected. That was not cruel, if one remembered that even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism more? Nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished.” (pg. 92-93, references and footnotes are found in Evans, Richard J. 2001 “Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and The David Irving Trial” New York:Basic Books).
In 1938 the Nazi “Office of Racial Policy” publication Inromationsdienst Martin Luther’s advice on the “proper” treatment of Jews was given prominent display:
… to put their synagogues and schools to fire, and what will not burn, to cover with earth and rubble so that no-one will ever again see anything there but cinders … Second, one should tear down and destroy their houses, for they do also in there what they do in their schools and synagogues … And third, one should confiscate their prayer books and Talmud, in which idolatry and lies, slander and blasphemy is taught” Pg. 88, Proctor, Robert N. 1988 Racial Hygene:Medicine Under the Nazis Boston: Harvard University Press.
The founder of Protestant Christianity was a greater inspiration to the Nazis than any scientist. The Nazi Office of Racial Policy held thousands of public meetings a month promoting anti-semitism and attacking “muddle-headed humanitarianism” (Humanitätsduselei) or, what we call “liberalism” today. Science, politicized in Germany by the same conditions that radicalized both Left, and Right, was used as justification for actions long advocated as “Christian.” The political philosophy called Social Darwinism (divorced in reality from evolutionary biology) through the efforts of Alfred Poletz and to a lesser degree Ernst Haeckel and others was infuential in the organization of the Society for Racial Hygiene (Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene). But more significantly, Poletz was a believer in Nordic superiority, and he quciky formed a secret group of racists active within the Society who were strongly influenced by the racial theories of Arthur Comte de Gobineau published in the early 1850s (well before Darwin’s books). Gobineau’s complimented the creationist theories of the “pre-Adamites” who went so far as to claim that Negroes had been created on the Genesis fifth day with “other beasts of the field.”
The false notion that there were, or could be single issues determining complex social phenomena such as the rise of the Nazis, and the Holocaust is well explored by Goldhagen (1996), and Friedlander (1997). The interested reader should consult their work for insights on the general anti-Semitism of the Europeans and its direct influence on the Holocaust.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah 1996 “Hitlers willing Executioner’s: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” New York: Random House
Friedlander, Saul 1997 “Nazi Germany and the Jews: Vol 1: The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939” New York: HarperCollins
Mr. Foust doesn’t Know Recent History
With the Hutu-Tutsi slayings Mr. Foust reaches for a new low. There were documented instances where the ethnically motivated murderers had to ask their victims to identify themselves. Further, while the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal indicted and convicted Christian ministers for their crimes agains humanity, no biologists had commited atrocities. False claims of racism, or logic tortured to indict biology have no traction.
Mr. Foust next makes some asinine suggestions to “Black people” in the most arrogant and demeaning way. The average educated person, Black, White, or spotted, can see through the trivialized evolution=racism, but Mr. Foust wants to warn all the po’ Black people what to expect. When I taught at the Medical College of Georgia, we all knew that the KKK and their RFR (religious far-right) allies were part of our past, and probable future. Mr. Foust, your warnings are a revolting arrogance that someone of your callow years and obvious lack of ability should not make.
Mr. Foust is Even Weak on Apologetics
Allow me one further observation, Mr. Foust tells us, “Society says it is far-fetched to believe that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;” as the book of Acts says.
And he is at last partially correct. The sciences of evolutionary biology and anthropology have established, without reservation or retreat into superstition or any temporary political enthusiasm that we are “of one blood, all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.” The rest is still in question.
Dr. Gary S. Hurd
Acknowledgments: I would like to thank Ian F. Musgrave and Sheryl L. Anderson for their helpful suggestions. All errors of fact or interpretation are my very own.
Scott Foust is a fourth-year German literature student. Contact him at foustsl@email.uc.edu.