Günther Just was a German eugenicist, biologist and anthropologist. He came from Berlin. After studying zoology, he received his doctorate in the field of August Mendel’s ‘hereditary theory’. In 1928 he became Professor of Zoology in Greifswald. There he founded the ‘Institute for Human Heredity and Eugenics’ in 1933. In 1937, he became an employee of the Reich Health Office. Just coined the term ‘human genetics’, which in his opinion was intended to serve ‘racial hygiene’.
After the war, he lied in his denazification proceedings that his career had been hindered by the National Socialists. In connection with his application for a professorship in Würzburg, he was therefore categorised as an opponent of the National Socialist movement and ideology by the Bavarian Ministry of Culture in 1948. In the same year, he became Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tübingen and was awarded an honorary doctorate a year later. He died in 1950.
