Anne Quinchon-Caudal

Anne Quinchon-Caudal is a permanent lecturer in German studies at Paris Dauphine University since 2007 and an associate researcher at the ICT laboratory of Paris Cité University since 2013. A holder of the agrégation in German and a doctorate in Germanic studies, she specialises in the intellectual history of racial thought in German-speaking countries, with a particular emphasis on the Lebensreform, völkisch movements and National-Socialist ideology.

Her research revolves around the intersection of body, soul and race in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. She has published three major monographs—Hitler and the Races (2013), Towards a Blonde International (2015) and Before ‘Mein Kampf’ (2023)—as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles and dictionary entries that dissect the cultural and ideological roots of European racism.

Recent scholarly output centres on three intertwined themes: (i) the pre-1924 intellectual formation of Adolf Hitler, especially under the influence of Dietrich Eckart; (ii) the transatlantic diffusion of Nordic supremacism in the first half of the twentieth century; and (iii) the counter-cultural medical and ecological discourses that underpinned völkisch utopias. Overall, her work charts how esoteric, scientific and populist currents converged to produce modern racist ideologies.

She currently serves as co-editor of the thematic issue The Far Right in Europe since 1945 (2021) and has contributed twelve signed entries to the Historical and Critical Dictionary of Racism (2013), ranging from “Racial Soul” to “Nuremberg Laws.”