German biologist, racial hygienist/ eugenicist and Jesuit.
In 1896 he joined the Jesuits and studied theology, biology and philology until 1906, in various places including the United States at the College of the Sacred Heart, Wisconsin.
After the First World War, Muckermann was secretary of the Order of Malta in France and in the East, and he concentrated on journalistic activities. In 1926 he resigned from the Jesuit Order after clashes, but remained a Catholic clergyman.
Muckermann was a member of Alfred Ploetz’s “Deutschen Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene” and propagated eugenics as a “family-friendly science”. In his opinion, “hereditary disease” must be “asylated” (isolated) in institutions. In 1930 he was the co-founder of the magazine Eugenik.
From 1927 to 1933 he was head of department at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology in Berlin.
On 2 July 1932, Muckermann presented his draft for an eugenics law at the meeting of the Prussian Provincial Health Council on the theme “eugenics in the service of national well-being”. This meeting marked the end of the Weimar eugenics debate and initiated a legislative process, which concluded on 14 July 1933 in the “Act for the Prevention of Diseased Offspring”.
After the Second World War Muckermann took over the construction of the new Berlin Institute for Anthropology in 1947, which he directed until his death. From 1949 to 1954 he worked as a professor for anthropology and social ethics at the Technical University and was a scientific member of the Max Planck Society.
He died on 27 October 1962 in Berlin, aged 85.

Link to Wikipedia biography (German)