Gerhart Stein

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Gerhart Stein (born December 22, 1910 in Bad Kreuznach ; † May 8, 1971 ; in older literature there is often the wrong spelling Gerhar d Stein.) Was a doctor and racial theorist . In 1938 he became an employee of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt am Main and the Berlin Racial Hygiene Research Center (RHF) of the Reich Health Office , which recorded the " Gypsies " in Reich territory during the Nazi era and thus created a prerequisite for the genocide of them . His dissertation is considered a step in the paradigm shift from police and administrative discrimination to solving the “Gypsy question” “from the essence of this race” ( Heinrich Himmler ).

biography

Title page of the print version of the dissertation

Gerhart Stein was born on December 22nd, 1910 in Bad Kreuznach as the son of the ophthalmologist Ludwig Stein and his wife Helene, née Stuber. He graduated from school in 1930 at the "German College" in Bad Godesberg . He began studying medicine at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg , continued at the University of Innsbruck and Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen to graduate from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main .

SA and "Gypsy Research"

Stein joined the NSDAP and the SA on December 1, 1931 . His political activities for the NSDAP extended his studies, as he notes in the résumé of his dissertation: “I needed a little longer for my entire degree because I joined the party and the SA in Tübingen in 1931. [sic] entered and devoted my time and energy to movement, also taking a semester off for this. ” Stein studied at the University of Frankfurt from 1934, where he graduated with the state examination in May 1937.

The racial hygiene practice of the Nazi state was part of his further academic career, as he writes: After the state examination, I worked for six months at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene with Professor Dr. Freiherr von Verschuer in Frankfurt aM I dealt with assessments on sterilization and marital suitability and with twin research . In 1938 he worked for four months in Berlin for the Racial Hygiene and Population Policy Research Center (RHF) of Robert Ritter , and for another four months at the Urban Hospital in Berlin. He received his license to practice medicine on August 10 in Berlin.

Stein chose the topic and the doctoral supervisor in 1936 on his own initiative. Even before his dissertation, Stein must have been doing "gypsy research" according to a somewhat vague statement from his doctoral supervisor: "It was only possible to carry out my own work thanks to Mr. Stein's many years of experience in dealing with gypsies."

The title of his dissertation, submitted at the end of 1938, was "On the Psychology and Anthropology of Gypsies in Germany". It appeared in 1941 in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (albeit with a misprint in the title: "On the Physiology and Anthropology of Gypsies in Germany"). For his dissertation, he evaluated studies that he carried out in 1937 on 247 Sinti and Roma, most of whom were “concentrated in a camp near Berlin”. Stein supplemented his Berlin research with surveys in Frankfurt.

Police guarding the forced camp for Sinti and Roma in Berlin-Marzahn (photo by RHF)
Elisabeth Weirich with her children in the forced camp for Sinti and Roma in Berlin-Marzahn (photo by RHF)

The camp near Berlin can only have been the forced camp established in 1936 and guarded by the police in Berlin-Marzahn . On June 16, 1936, a local newspaper reported Berlin as "free of gypsies". The camp was constantly guarded by policemen with dogs that mistreated the inmates. Only the employees of the RHF and the Protestant "Gypsy Mission" had access. The children were not allowed to go to school, the adults and young people were forced to work . From Marzahn, Sinti and Roma were deported directly to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 . Stein himself calls the examination sites of his doctoral thesis “forced camps”.

During his work in 1936, in several letters to the Prussian police authorities, he made suggestions on how the persecution of Sinti and Roma could be made more effective.

Stein's examinations are anonymized, so that it is impossible to determine the fate of individual persons examined by him for his doctoral thesis. This is particularly true for the Sinti and Roma investigated in Marzahn.

In terms of content, Stein provides nothing but the pseudoscientific legitimation of National Socialist politics and stands at the beginning of the new racial paradigm of National Socialist Gypsy research, as is already clear in the first sentence: "In our people, there has been demonstrably an alien race, the gypsies [... ] ”(P. 74). Or further in the text: “The rough identification of a gypsy does not only include the external person with his foreign colors, his rotting clothes, or even just the fact that he is wandering about; at least one of the listed features must be present to be able to deduce gypsy blood. Eye shape, smell and primitive expressions of life are typical for every gypsy "This" smell "is not based on the living conditions, but" rather a racial characteristic ". Elsewhere he showed his anti-Semitism by equating “Gypsies” with Jews : “Gypsies are at least as dangerous as Judaism”.

Stein's work is divided into a “psychological part” on “manners and customs”, “religion”, “psychology”, “music”, “crime” and an “anthropological part” which reproduces the anthrometric data he collected in the camps .

His presentation is consistently racist, in parts anti-Semitic and scientifically baseless: In the “psychological part” he expresses himself: “The gypsies are animals…” or “this is the typical gypsy psyche: animal-like, instinctual, emotional”. He contradicted the prejudice that “Gypsies” kidnapped children, but raised this charge against Jews, here “for the purpose of ritual sacrificing children” (cf. legend of ritual murder ). About “Gypsy hybrids” he writes: “All that remains for them is a miserable life full of poverty, hunted and persecuted, victims of their unhappy instincts. [...] and one can say that practically the Gypsy hybrid is to be regarded as inferior. ”In the summary he writes that“ logical thinking and understanding ”would only play a“ subordinate role ”compared to the“ instinctive parts ”of the“ Gypsy psyche ”.

One of the dissertation reviewers evaluated it as follows: "In addition to the very interesting explanations of their family and clan life, it seems to me that the emphasis on Mr. Stein is important, especially at the time when the Reich Health Office is initiating a comprehensive survey of all gypsies living in Germany, Not to equate the gypsies without further ado with the asocials and criminals, but rather to delimit the latter as descendants of the crossing of asocial elements of the host population with gypsies. ” “ Overall coverage ” meant the registration of the minority by the RHF.

The examiners unanimously rated Stein's dissertation with a politically motivated “very good”, but he only passed the medical examination with “sufficient”.

Stein's work for the Racial Hygiene Research Center (RHF)

" Gypsy camp Cologne-Bickendorf ", the camp had had a barbed wire fence since April 1935, a lockable driveway and was guarded by an SS camp administrator who lived on the premises with his family . The Cologne Sinti and Roma were concentrated here. Some of them were forced to leave their homes in the caravans, which were also provided by the city. (Photo by RHF 1937)

In the files of the Ritter Institute that have been preserved, there is a file package of so-called work lists, according to which the date and processor can be assigned to individual cities. According to this, at the beginning of 1938, i.e. before submitting his doctoral thesis, Stein visited Sinti and Roma in several German cities and collected data for the RHF. In January and February he was in Wiesbaden , in February 1938 in Ober-Ingelheim and Mainz , followed by Cologne and Bergzabern in March . According to information from Adolf Würth , research assistant at the RHF, Stein worked there for a few months at the “Ritter Research Center”. Stein's investigations in Cologne - like Stein's dissertation - are also likely to have partly taken place in a forced camp. Commitment to Cologne compulsory camps in Cologne began in April 1935. In August 1937 the city of Frankfurt set up a compulsory internment camp for Sinti and Roma.

In January 1938, Frankfurt Sinti and Roma who had already been interned in the Frankfurt Dieselstrasse forced camp were examined. On January 19, the registration was probably carried out in the forced camp itself. At the appointment on January 20, 1938, the police headquarters in Frankfurt were recorded and photographed for identification purposes. The internment of the Sinti examined in the camp is described on measuring cards as follows: "Property assigned / set up wagon / caravan" - or: "Under official pressure / caravan". For Mainz, Wiesbaden and Ingelheim there is no evidence of such camps so far, and here, too, cooperation with the police was certainly close.

Stein's work lists from 1936 to 1938 can be compared with partially preserved later police deportation lists and the preserved camp book of the " Gypsy Family Camp Auschwitz ". The appraisal, that is, the inclusion of the person in the “Gypsy family archive” of the RHF, was an important step in the genocide of Sinti and Roma.

A higher percentage of those Sinti and Roma who were examined by Stein but not deported as early as 1940 or 1941 can be found in the Auschwitz camp registers.

The connection between the recording of the Sinti and Roma by the police and Stein's activities as employees of the RHF up to the murder in concentration camps can best be demonstrated in the case of individual victims who were deported to Auschwitz immediately in 1943. This connection can be demonstrated particularly well in the case of the L. family from Wiesbaden, where the police only had to expand Stein's work list for their deportation lists to include children under the age of six in 1938, almost all of whom were murdered in Auschwitz.

On May 22, 1940, the Sinti were driven on foot from Hohenasperg Fortress through the village to a special train to the Generalgouvernement under police surveillance. (Photo by RHF)

The Sinti from the cities of Ingelheim and Mainz, which Stein visited, were deported to the Generalgouvernement on May 16, 1940 via an interim camp in the Hohenasperg Fortress , where their individual traces are often lost. In the General Government they were distributed to various camps. The prisoners had to do hard labor under inhumane conditions; many died of exhaustion and starvation. Some of the Palatinate and Rhenish Hesse Sinti were killed in a shooting operation in Radom in 1943 . The Cologne Sinti were also deported on May 16, 1940.

The fate of a Sinti family with several generations who was recorded by Stein from January 26 to 29, 1938 in Wiesbaden and who fell victim to genocide in Auschwitz can serve as an example. Therese L. was not yet born at the time of recording.

Surname Born date of death No. Dep. No. Auschwitz
Joseph 1895 July 24, 1943 36 2340
Wilhelm 1925 April 4, 1943 40 2341
Joseph 1928 April 21, 1944 41 2342
Anna Maria 1898 April 20, 1943 37 2621
Anna Maria 1924 9.6.1944 39 2322
Hildegard 1930 ?.?.? 42 2623
Berta 1932 May 20, 1944 43 2624
Rosina 1936 9/28/1943 44 2625
Therese 1941 May 2, 1943 - 2626
Jacob 1913 - 38 -

No. Dep. stands for the numbering of a deportation list for Wiesbaden,?.?.? for an illegible date of death.

Further professional career

After 1945 Stein worked as a doctor in Wiesbaden . Like all employees of the RHF, Stein was never held responsible for his crimes.

Reception after 1945

Hermann Arnold , the West German hereditary hygienist and "Gypsy and anti-social researcher" in the succession of the National Socialist tsiganologists and advisor to the Adenauer government on questions of Gypsy politics, evaluated Stein's dissertation in 1965 as the "still" useful basis of the "physical anthropology of Central European Gypsies ". Arnold explicitly emphasized as positive that Stein used the same categorization system for "the degree of [racial] mixing of the test subjects" as the Racial Hygiene Research Center of Robert Ritter. Stein's theses remained in effect well after the end of National Socialism. Approaches to a critical examination of them, which reflect Stein's role in the National Socialist persecution of the gypsies, have only existed since the early 1990s.

Publications

  • On the physiology and anthropology of the gypsies in Germany . In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 72 / 1-3 (1940 [published 1941]), pp. 74–114.
    • On the psychology and anthropology of the gypsies in Germany . Reprint of the previous one, Graefenhainichen 1941; additionally with Stein's résumé.

literature

  • Peter Sandner: "Racial anthropological" research by the Verschuer student Gerhart Stein . In: Fritz Bauer Institute (ed.): "Elimination of Jewish influence ...". Anti-Semitic Research, Elites, and Careers under National Socialism . Campus, Frankfurt a. M. 1999, ISBN 3-593-36098-5 , pp. 80-84
  • Robert Gellately / Nathan Stoltzfus: Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany . Princeton 2001, ISBN 0-691-08684-2
  • Michael Berenbaum / Abraham J. Peck (eds.): The Holocaust and History. The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined . Bloomington 2002, ISBN 0-253-21529-3
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8

Archival material

  • List of names of the former members of the NSDAP and their branches. Addendum 1 Wiesbaden Alt
  • Gerhard Stein - Dissertation file No. 2157 in the archive of the Dean's Office for Human Medicine at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt a. M.
  • Registration lists of the "Forschungsstelle Ritter" at the Federal Archives, Sign. R 165/38
  • Deportation list Wiesbaden, at the State Main Archive Wiesbaden
  • Rob. Ritter: Report to the DFG , at the Federal Archives Sign. R 73/14005

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data with Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 599
  2. ↑ See Sandner. So also with Hohmann, Robert Ritter ... and even in the doctoral file
  3. ↑ Sandner pp. 90-92; Joachim S. Hohmann , Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology , p. 291
  4. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 599. A later list states December 1, 1931 - December 1, 1933/34 as the membership period for the SA. List of names of the former members of the NSDAP and their branches. Addendum 1 Wiesbaden Alt.
  5. ↑ Stein's biography in his dissertation file according to Sandner, p. 80.
  6. ↑ Stein's curriculum vitae in his dissertation file. See also Hohmann, p. 291.
  7. ↑ a b c d Otmar von Verschuer's report in the dissertation file.
  8. ↑ Reimar Gilsenbach : Oh Django, sing your anger! . Berlin 1993, pp. 139-147
  9. ↑ Stein p. 75
  10. ^ "Racial anthropological" research by the Verschuer student Gerhard Stein, pp. 80–81.
  11. ↑ a b Stein p. 77
  12. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 599.
  13. ↑ Stein p. 85.
  14. ↑ Stein p. 87.
  15. ↑ Stein p. 90
  16. ↑ Stein p. 90f.
  17. ↑ Stein p. 109.
  18. ↑ Stein dissertation files in the archive of the Frankfurt University Hospital.
  19. ↑ Stein dissertation files in the archive of the Frankfurt University Hospital, on the Sandner assessment.
  20. ↑ BA R 165/38. Note: a photo of the Bergzabern barracks without a date can be found in Arnold: Die Zigeuner p. 276. It is an alleged photo of the district administration, which is doubtful in view of the concealment that Arnold has shown in NS sources.
  21. ↑ Conversation Würth with Benno Müller-Hill in: ders. Tödliche Wissenschaft 1988, p. 156.
  22. ↑ The city of Frankfurt am Main made a name for itself from 1937 with proposals that later became the practice of persecution throughout the Reich. The municipality demanded that Sinti and Roma be restricted in their freedom of movement, police registration, occupational bans and forced labor. (Widmann 2001: 17) (Widmann 2001: 16) Peter Widmann: At the edges of cities. Sinti and Yeniche in German local politics . Berlin 2001
  23. ^ Peter Sandner: The "racial biological" and police registration of the Sinti and Roma in Frankfurt from 1936 . 2006 (online)
  24. ↑ PDF at www.mainz1933-1945.de
  25. ^ List of names of the former members of the NSDAP and their branches. Addendum 1 Wiesbaden Alt.
  26. ^ Hermann Arnold: The Gypsies . Origin and life of the tribes in the German-speaking area, Olten / Freiburg i. B. 1965, p. 277.
personal data
SURNAME Stein, Gerhart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stein, Gerhard (misspelling)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German human geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH December 22, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Kreuznach
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1971