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Eugen Fischer

Eugen Fischer (5 July 1874 – 9 July 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics, and a member of the Nazi Party. He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, and also served as rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin.

Eugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer in 1934
Born(1874-07-05)5 July 1874
Died9 July 1967(1967-07-09) (aged 93)
NationalityGerman
OccupationProfessor
Known forNazi eugenics
Political partyNazi Party

Fischer's ideas informed the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which served to justify the Nazi Party's belief in German racial superiority to other "races", and especially the Jews.[1] Adolf Hitler read Fischer's work while he was imprisoned in 1923 and he used Fischer's eugenic notions in support of a pure Aryan society in his manifesto, Mein Kampf (My Struggle).[1]

Fischer was born in Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden, in 1874. He studied medicine, folkloristics, history, anatomy, and anthropology in Berlin, Freiburg and Munich.[2] In 1918, he joined the Anatomical Institute in Freiburg,[3] part of the University of Freiburg.[4]

In 1927, Fischer became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A), a role for which he'd been recommended the prior year by Erwin Baur.[5]

In 1933 Fischer signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler appointed him rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin, now Humboldt University.[6] Fischer retired from the university in 1942. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a student of Fischer.[7][8]

After the war, he completed his memoirs, it is believed that in them he lessened his role in the genocidal programme of Nazi Germany. He died in 1967.

Early work

 
Head of Herero prisoner at Shark Island used for medical experimentation.

In 1906, Fischer conducted field research in German South West Africa (now Namibia). He studied the Basters, offspring of German or Boer men and Black African (Khoekhoe) women in that area. His study concluded with a call to prevent the production of a "mixed race" by the prohibition of "mixed marriages" such as those which he had studied. It included human experimentation on the Herero and Namaqua people.[9] He argued that while the existing "Mischling" descendants of the mixed marriages might be useful for Germany, he recommended that they should not continue to reproduce. His recommendations were followed and by 1912 interracial marriage was prohibited throughout the German colonies.[10][11] As a precursor to his experiments on Jews in Nazi Germany, he collected bones and skulls for his studies, in part from medical experimentation on African prisoners of war in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide.[12][13]

His ideas which were related to the maintenance of the apparent purity of races, influenced future German Nazi legislation on race, including the Nuremberg laws.[11]

In 1927, Fischer was a speaker at the World Population Conference which was held in Geneva, Switzerland.[14]

Nazi Germany

 
Young Rhinelander who was classified as a Rhineland bastard and hereditarily unfit under the Nazi regime as a result of his mixed race heritage

In the years from 1937–1938 Fischer and his colleagues analysed 600 children in Nazi Germany who were descended from French-African soldiers who occupied western areas of Germany after the First World War and were known as the Rhineland Bastards; the children were subsequently subjected to sterilization.[15]

 
Photograph from Josef Mengele's Argentine identification document (1956)

Fischer did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1940.[16] However, he was influential with National Socialists early on. Adolf Hitler read his two-volume work, Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene (first published in 1921 and co-written by Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz) while incarcerated in 1923 and used its ideas in Mein Kampf.[17] He also authored The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Miscegenation among Humans (1913) (German: Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen), a field study which provided context for later racial debates, influenced German colonial legislation and apparently provided "scientific" support for the blatantly racist and anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws.[18]

Under the Nazi regime, Fischer developed the physiological specifications such as skull dimensions which were apparently used to determine racial origins and he also developed the so-called Fischer–Saller scale for hair colour. He and the members of his team experimented on Gypsies and African-Germans, drawing their blood and measuring their skulls in order to scientifically validate his theories. After directing the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, he was succeeded by Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who tutored Josef Mengele when he was active at Auschwitz.

Efforts to return the Namibian skulls which were taken by Fischer were started with an investigation which was conducted by the University of Freiburg in 2011 and they were completed with the return of the skulls in March 2014.[19][20][21]

In 1944, Fischer intervened in an attempt to get his friend Martin Heidegger, the Nazi philosopher, released from service in the Volkssturm militia. However, Heidegger had already been released from service when Fischer's letter arrived.[22]: 332–3 

Works

 
Eugen Fischer during a ceremony at the University of Berlin 1934

1909 to 1949

  • Fischer, Eugen. 1899. "Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Nasenhöhle und des Thränennasenganges der Amphisbaeniden", Archiv für Mikroskopische Anatomie. 55:1, pp. 441–478.
  • Fischer, Eugen. 1901. "Zur Kenntniss der Fontanella metopica und ihrer Bildungen". Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie.4:1. pp. 17–30.
  • Fischer, Eugen, Professor an der Universität Freiburg i. Br. 1906. "Die Variationen an Radius und Ulna des Menschen". Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie. Vol. 9. No. 2.
  • Fischer, Eugen. 1908. Der Patriziat Heinrichs III und Heinrichs IV. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Fischer's PhD thesis.
  • Maass, Alfred. Durch Zentral-Sumatra. Berlin: Behr. 1910. Additional contributing authors: J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan and E. Fischer.
  • Fischer, Eugen. 1913.Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen: anthropologische und ethnographiesche Studien am Rehobother Bastardvolk in Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, ausgeführt mit Unterstützung der Kgl. preuss, Akademie der Wissenschaften. Jena: G. Fischer.
  • Gaupp, Ernst Wilhelm Theodor. Eugen Fischer (ed.) 1917. August Weismann: sein Leben und sein Werk. Jena: Verlag von Gustav Fischer.
  • Schwalbe, G. and Eugen Fischer (eds.). Anthropologie. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1923.
  • Fischer, E. and H.F.K. Günther. Deutsche Köpfe nordischer Rasse: 50 Abbildungen mit Geleitwarten. Munich: J.F. Lehmann. 1927.
  • Fischer, Eugen and Gerhard Kittel. Das antike Weltjudentum : Tatsachen, Texte, Bilder. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1943.[23]

1950 to 1959

  • Sarkar, Sasanka Sekher; Eugen Fischer and Keith Arthur, The Aboriginal Races of India, Calcutta: Bookland. 1954.
  • Fischer, Eugen. Begegnungen mit Toten: aus den Erinnerungen eines Anatomen. Freiburg: H.F. Schulz. 1959.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b Anderson, Ingrid L. (2016-05-26). Ethics and Suffering since the Holocaust: Making Ethics "First Philosophy" in Levinas, Wiesel and Rubenstein. Routledge. ISBN 9781317298359.
  2. ^ Max-Planck-Gesellschaft - Archive. . Archived from the original on 2014-08-19.
  3. ^ "Eugen Fischer".
  4. ^ Eugen Fischer (1921). "Bitte des anatomischen Instituts Freiburg i.B."
  5. ^ Schmul 2003, p. 25.
  6. ^ Lasalle, Ferdinand. "Rektoratsreden im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert – Online-Bibliographie - Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin". www.historische-kommission-muenchen-editionen.de. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  7. ^ Michael H. Kater (2011). "The Nazi Symbiosis: Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 85: 515–516. doi:10.1353/bhm.2011.0067. S2CID 72443192.
  8. ^ Randall Hansen; Desmond King (2013). Sterilized by the State: Eugenics, Race, and the Population Scare in Twentieth-Century. Cambridge University Press. p. 328. ISBN 978-1107434592.
  9. ^ . Archived from the original on 2011-12-09. Retrieved 2014-01-19.
  10. ^ Holocaust Encyclopedia, p. 420
  11. ^ a b Friedlander 1997, p. 11
  12. ^ http://www.ezakwantu.com/Gallery%20Herero%20and%20Namaqua%20Genocide.htmMedical[permanent dead link] experimentation in Africa
  13. ^ Lusane, Clarence (2002-12-13). Hitler's black victims: The historical experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi era. Taylor & Francis. p. 44. ISBN 9780415932950. sterilization of herero women.
  14. ^ Ross, Edward Alsworth (October 1927). "Birth Control Review" (PDF). World Population Conference.
  15. ^ Bioethics: an anthology Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer page 232 Wiley-Blackwell 2006
  16. ^ "Human biodiversity: genes, race, and history", Jonathan M. Marks. Transaction Publishers, 1995. p. 88. ISBN 0202020339, 9780202020334.
  17. ^ A. E. Samaan (2013). From a Race of Masters to a Master Race: 1948 To 1848. A.E. Samaan. p. 539. ISBN 978-1626600003.
  18. ^ Holocaust Encyclopedia p. 420.
  19. ^ . 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-04-03.
  20. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the : Namibia Press Agency (7 March 2014). "NAMPA: WHK skulls repatriated to Namibia 07 March 2014". Retrieved 19 April 2018 – via YouTube.
  21. ^ "Germany to send back 35 skulls". newera.com.na. 28 February 2014. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  22. ^ Safranski, Rüdiger (1999). Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil. Cambridge (MAss): Harvard University Press.
  23. ^ Das Antike Weltjudentum - Forschungen zur Judenfrage. 1944.

References

  • Baumel, Judith Tydor (2001). The Holocaust Encyclopedia. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08432-3.
  • Black, Edwin (2004). War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race. Thunder's Mouth Press. ISBN 1-56858-321-4.
  • Fangerau H.; Müller I. (2002). "Das Standardwerk der Rassenhygiene von Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer und Fritz Lenz im Urteil der Psychiatrie und Neurologie 1921-1940". Der Nervenarzt. 73 (11): 1039–1046. doi:10.1007/s00115-002-1421-1. PMID 12430045. S2CID 42189711.
  • Mendes-Flohr, Paul R. (1995). The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History. Oxford University Press US. ISBN 0-19-507453-X.
  • Schmuhl, Hans-Walter. "The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human heredity and Eugenics, 1927-1945", Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol. 259, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen, 2003
  • Weindling P. (1985). "Weimar eugenics: The kaiser wilhelm institute for anthropology, human heredity and eugenics in social context". Annals of Science. 42 (3): 303–318. doi:10.1080/00033798500200221. PMID 11620696.
  • Friedlander, Henry. 1997. The origins of Nazi genocide: from euthanasia to the Final Solution. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-2208-6 ISBN 0807846759.

External links

  • Book Review of The Rehoboth Bastards in Nature (1913)
  • Works by Eugen Fischer at Project Gutenberg
  • Lusane, Clarence (2002-12-13). Hitler's black victims: The historical experiences of Afro-Germans, European Blacks, Africans, and African Americans in the Nazi era. Taylor & Francis. p. 44. ISBN 978-0-415-93295-0. sterilization of herero women.

eugen, fischer, historian, historian, july, 1874, july, 1967, german, professor, medicine, anthropology, eugenics, member, nazi, party, served, director, kaiser, wilhelm, institute, anthropology, human, heredity, eugenics, also, served, rector, frederick, will. For the historian see Eugen Fischer historian Eugen Fischer 5 July 1874 9 July 1967 was a German professor of medicine anthropology and eugenics and a member of the Nazi Party He served as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology Human Heredity and Eugenics and also served as rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin Eugen FischerEugen Fischer in 1934Born 1874 07 05 5 July 1874Karlsruhe Grand Duchy of Baden German EmpireDied9 July 1967 1967 07 09 aged 93 Freiburg im Breisgau West GermanyNationalityGermanOccupationProfessorKnown forNazi eugenicsPolitical partyNazi PartyFischer s ideas informed the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 which served to justify the Nazi Party s belief in German racial superiority to other races and especially the Jews 1 Adolf Hitler read Fischer s work while he was imprisoned in 1923 and he used Fischer s eugenic notions in support of a pure Aryan society in his manifesto Mein Kampf My Struggle 1 Fischer was born in Karlsruhe Grand Duchy of Baden in 1874 He studied medicine folkloristics history anatomy and anthropology in Berlin Freiburg and Munich 2 In 1918 he joined the Anatomical Institute in Freiburg 3 part of the University of Freiburg 4 In 1927 Fischer became the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology Human Heredity and Eugenics KWI A a role for which he d been recommended the prior year by Erwin Baur 5 In 1933 Fischer signed the Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State In 1933 Adolf Hitler appointed him rector of the Frederick William University of Berlin now Humboldt University 6 Fischer retired from the university in 1942 Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a student of Fischer 7 8 After the war he completed his memoirs it is believed that in them he lessened his role in the genocidal programme of Nazi Germany He died in 1967 Contents 1 Early work 2 Nazi Germany 3 Works 3 1 1909 to 1949 3 2 1950 to 1959 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 External linksEarly work Edit Head of Herero prisoner at Shark Island used for medical experimentation In 1906 Fischer conducted field research in German South West Africa now Namibia He studied the Basters offspring of German or Boer men and Black African Khoekhoe women in that area His study concluded with a call to prevent the production of a mixed race by the prohibition of mixed marriages such as those which he had studied It included human experimentation on the Herero and Namaqua people 9 He argued that while the existing Mischling descendants of the mixed marriages might be useful for Germany he recommended that they should not continue to reproduce His recommendations were followed and by 1912 interracial marriage was prohibited throughout the German colonies 10 11 As a precursor to his experiments on Jews in Nazi Germany he collected bones and skulls for his studies in part from medical experimentation on African prisoners of war in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua Genocide 12 13 His ideas which were related to the maintenance of the apparent purity of races influenced future German Nazi legislation on race including the Nuremberg laws 11 In 1927 Fischer was a speaker at the World Population Conference which was held in Geneva Switzerland 14 Nazi Germany Edit Young Rhinelander who was classified as a Rhineland bastard and hereditarily unfit under the Nazi regime as a result of his mixed race heritage In the years from 1937 1938 Fischer and his colleagues analysed 600 children in Nazi Germany who were descended from French African soldiers who occupied western areas of Germany after the First World War and were known as the Rhineland Bastards the children were subsequently subjected to sterilization 15 Photograph from Josef Mengele s Argentine identification document 1956 Fischer did not officially join the Nazi Party until 1940 16 However he was influential with National Socialists early on Adolf Hitler read his two volume work Principles of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene first published in 1921 and co written by Erwin Baur and Fritz Lenz while incarcerated in 1923 and used its ideas in Mein Kampf 17 He also authored The Rehoboth Bastards and the Problem of Miscegenation among Humans 1913 German Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen a field study which provided context for later racial debates influenced German colonial legislation and apparently provided scientific support for the blatantly racist and anti Semitic Nuremberg laws 18 Under the Nazi regime Fischer developed the physiological specifications such as skull dimensions which were apparently used to determine racial origins and he also developed the so called Fischer Saller scale for hair colour He and the members of his team experimented on Gypsies and African Germans drawing their blood and measuring their skulls in order to scientifically validate his theories After directing the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology Human Heredity and Eugenics he was succeeded by Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer who tutored Josef Mengele when he was active at Auschwitz Efforts to return the Namibian skulls which were taken by Fischer were started with an investigation which was conducted by the University of Freiburg in 2011 and they were completed with the return of the skulls in March 2014 19 20 21 In 1944 Fischer intervened in an attempt to get his friend Martin Heidegger the Nazi philosopher released from service in the Volkssturm militia However Heidegger had already been released from service when Fischer s letter arrived 22 332 3 Works Edit Eugen Fischer during a ceremony at the University of Berlin 1934 1909 to 1949 Edit Fischer Eugen 1899 Beitrage zur Kenntniss der Nasenhohle und des Thranennasenganges der Amphisbaeniden Archiv fur Mikroskopische Anatomie 55 1 pp 441 478 Fischer Eugen 1901 Zur Kenntniss der Fontanella metopica und ihrer Bildungen Zeitschrift fur Morphologie und Anthropologie 4 1 pp 17 30 Fischer Eugen Professor an der Universitat Freiburg i Br 1906 Die Variationen an Radius und Ulna des Menschen Zeitschrift fur Morphologie und Anthropologie Vol 9 No 2 Fischer Eugen 1908 Der Patriziat Heinrichs III und Heinrichs IV Tubingen J C B Mohr Paul Siebeck Fischer s PhD thesis Maass Alfred Durch Zentral Sumatra Berlin Behr 1910 Additional contributing authors J P Kleiweg de Zwaan and E Fischer Fischer Eugen 1913 Die Rehobother Bastards und das Bastardierungsproblem beim Menschen anthropologische und ethnographiesche Studien am Rehobother Bastardvolk in Deutsch Sudwest Afrika ausgefuhrt mit Unterstutzung der Kgl preuss Akademie der Wissenschaften Jena G Fischer Gaupp Ernst Wilhelm Theodor Eugen Fischer ed 1917 August Weismann sein Leben und sein Werk Jena Verlag von Gustav Fischer Schwalbe G and Eugen Fischer eds Anthropologie Leipzig B G Teubner 1923 Fischer E and H F K Gunther Deutsche Kopfe nordischer Rasse 50 Abbildungen mit Geleitwarten Munich J F Lehmann 1927 Fischer Eugen and Gerhard Kittel Das antike Weltjudentum Tatsachen Texte Bilder Hamburg Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1943 23 1950 to 1959 Edit Sarkar Sasanka Sekher Eugen Fischer and Keith Arthur The Aboriginal Races of India Calcutta Bookland 1954 Fischer Eugen Begegnungen mit Toten aus den Erinnerungen eines Anatomen Freiburg H F Schulz 1959 See also EditKarl Binding Josef Mengele Nazi eugenics Nazi human experimentation Nazi racial theories Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer Racial policy of Nazi Germany Racism in Germany Scientific racism Subsequent Nuremberg trials Doctors Trial Anthropometry Fischer Saller scale Shark Island Concentration Camp Rhineland BastardsNotes Edit a b Anderson Ingrid L 2016 05 26 Ethics and Suffering since the Holocaust Making Ethics First Philosophy in Levinas Wiesel and Rubenstein Routledge ISBN 9781317298359 Max Planck Gesellschaft Archive Fischer Eugen Archived from the original on 2014 08 19 Eugen Fischer Eugen Fischer 1921 Bitte des anatomischen Instituts Freiburg i B Schmul 2003 p 25 Lasalle Ferdinand Rektoratsreden im 19 und 20 Jahrhundert Online Bibliographie Friedrich Wilhelms Universitat Berlin www historische kommission muenchen editionen de Retrieved 19 April 2018 Michael H Kater 2011 The Nazi Symbiosis Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich Bulletin of the History of Medicine 85 515 516 doi 10 1353 bhm 2011 0067 S2CID 72443192 Randall Hansen Desmond King 2013 Sterilized by the State Eugenics Race and the Population Scare in Twentieth Century Cambridge University Press p 328 ISBN 978 1107434592 Herero and Namaqua Genocide Herero Genocide Nama Genocide Archived from the original on 2011 12 09 Retrieved 2014 01 19 Holocaust Encyclopedia p 420 a b Friedlander 1997 p 11 http www ezakwantu com Gallery 20Herero 20and 20Namaqua 20Genocide htmMedical permanent dead link experimentation in Africa Lusane Clarence 2002 12 13 Hitler s black victims The historical experiences of Afro Germans European Blacks Africans and African Americans in the Nazi era Taylor amp Francis p 44 ISBN 9780415932950 sterilization of herero women Ross Edward Alsworth October 1927 Birth Control Review PDF World Population Conference Bioethics an anthology Helga Kuhse Peter Singer page 232 Wiley Blackwell 2006 Human biodiversity genes race and history Jonathan M Marks Transaction Publishers 1995 p 88 ISBN 0202020339 9780202020334 A E Samaan 2013 From a Race of Masters to a Master Race 1948 To 1848 A E Samaan p 539 ISBN 978 1626600003 Holocaust Encyclopedia p 420 Repatriation of Skulls from Namibia University of Freiburg hands over human remains in ceremony 2014 Archived from the original on 2014 04 03 Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine Namibia Press Agency 7 March 2014 NAMPA WHK skulls repatriated to Namibia 07 March 2014 Retrieved 19 April 2018 via YouTube Germany to send back 35 skulls newera com na 28 February 2014 Retrieved 19 April 2018 Safranski Rudiger 1999 Martin Heidegger Between Good and Evil Cambridge MAss Harvard University Press Das Antike Weltjudentum Forschungen zur Judenfrage 1944 References EditBaumel Judith Tydor 2001 The Holocaust Encyclopedia Yale University Press ISBN 0 300 08432 3 Black Edwin 2004 War Against the Weak Eugenics and America s Campaign to Create a Master Race Thunder s Mouth Press ISBN 1 56858 321 4 Fangerau H Muller I 2002 Das Standardwerk der Rassenhygiene von Erwin Baur Eugen Fischer und Fritz Lenz im Urteil der Psychiatrie und Neurologie 1921 1940 Der Nervenarzt 73 11 1039 1046 doi 10 1007 s00115 002 1421 1 PMID 12430045 S2CID 42189711 Mendes Flohr Paul R 1995 The Jew in the Modern World A Documentary History Oxford University Press US ISBN 0 19 507453 X Schmuhl Hans Walter The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology Human heredity and Eugenics 1927 1945 Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science vol 259 Wallstein Verlag Gottingen 2003 Weindling P 1985 Weimar eugenics The kaiser wilhelm institute for anthropology human heredity and eugenics in social context Annals of Science 42 3 303 318 doi 10 1080 00033798500200221 PMID 11620696 Friedlander Henry 1997 The origins of Nazi genocide from euthanasia to the Final Solution University of North Carolina Press ISBN 0 8078 2208 6 ISBN 0807846759 External links EditBook Review of The Rehoboth Bastards in Nature 1913 2004 Newspaper Article regarding The Rehoboth Bastards The Rehoboth Bastards Photo Album Herero and Namaqua Genocide Galerie EzakwantuWorks by Eugen Fischer at Project Gutenberg Lusane Clarence 2002 12 13 Hitler s black victims The historical experiences of Afro Germans European Blacks Africans and African Americans in the Nazi era Taylor amp Francis p 44 ISBN 978 0 415 93295 0 sterilization of herero women Detailed overview of Eugen Fischer with references Newspaper clippings about Eugen Fischer in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Eugen Fischer amp oldid 1133126632, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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