She Has Her Mother's Laugh

The genetic nostalgia of the Nazis was so powerful that it even extended to other species. Hermann Göring, Hitler’s most powerful deputy, became a patron of a project to restore the wild ancestors of cattle. Known as aurochs, these giant animals had become extinct in the Middle Ages. Under Göring’s direction, zoologists searched Nazi-held countries for cows that seemed to retain a few vestigial features of aurochs. They bred the cattle, looking among the calves for the ones that appeared to step even further back in time.

Göring’s goal was to release the restored aurochs in Poland, where they would roam one of the last primeval European forests. He pictured himself as a modern Siegfried from Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, hunting the same noble beasts as his Aryan ancestors. To clear the path for his romantic vision, Göring emptied the Polish forests of Jews, Polish resistance fighters, and Soviet partisans.

To test this idea, Doudna and her colleagues tried to cut out a piece of DNA from a jellyfish gene. (The gene is a common tool for molecular biologists, because it makes a glowing protein that can light up a cell like a microscopic jack-o’-lantern.)

As unbroken lines of descent from noble ancestors became more important, leading families paid artists for visual propaganda.