From India to Iran: How Hitler redefined ‘Aryan’ for Nazism: According to Nazi ideology, an ideal “Aryan” was blond, blue-eyed with athletic features. The term is still tied to Nazi Germany, but its origin lies elsewhere. (Suzanne Cords, May 5, 2026, Deutsche-Welle)
The racist reinterpretation of the term Aryan began in the middle of the 19th century. In his four-volume work “An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races,” French writer and diplomat Joseph Arthur de Gobineau divided humanity into three groups, the white, yellow and black races. His conclusion was that the white, Aryan original race was superior to the others, characterized by its “immeasurably superior intelligence,” and was destined to rule over the others. He also warned against “racial mixing,” as this would endanger both the quality of the Aryan original “race” and humanity as a whole.
Gobineau’s theory was largely ignored by his contemporaries but later found traction after being appropriated and altered to serve nationalist, far-right ideology. A large number of scientists and academics subsequently used Gobineau’s racial theory as a basis for their own writings on the subject.