Adolf Wahlmann

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Adolf Wahlmann during interrogation in Hadamar by American soldiers in 1945

Adolf Wahlmann (born December 10, 1876 in Koblenz-Ehrenbreitstein , † November 1, 1956 in Michelfeld ) was a German doctor. From 1942 to 1945 he headed the Hadamar State Hospital , where thousands of disabled and mentally ill people were murdered as part of the National Socialist “euthanasia” program .

Origin and studies

After graduating from high school in Laubach in 1897 , Adolf Wahlmann studied medicine in Gießen , Marburg , Erlangen and Kiel . He finished his studies with his dissertation in 1903.

In the state hospitals of the Hessen-Nassau district association

As a young assistant doctor, Wahlmann was employed in the Merxhausen State Hospitals of the Hesse District Association until 1905. In that year he also received his specialist certification as a psychiatrist.

From May 5, 1905, he worked for the Nassau district association and was employed in the Weilmünster state hospital until 1906 and then in the Eichberg state hospital until 1908 . There he was appointed senior physician on October 1, 1906 .

Wahlmann interrupted his work in the Eichberg state hospital by serving as a senior doctor in the Hadamar state hospital from 1908 to 1911. He then returned to Eichberg, where he stayed until 1933 - again interrupted by his participation in the First World War from 1914 to 1918 .

Wahlmann oriented himself politically in the German-conservative environment. In 1925 he joined the German People's Party (DVP). After the National Socialists came to power, Wahlmann became a member of the NSDAP on April 1, 1933 (membership no. 1.795.834). A year and a half later, on November 9, 1934, he also joined the General SS .

Wahlmann, however, did not show any political commitment. He also refused to quit the church. In his first trial it is said of him:

“He was a devout Christian and leader of a church choir as he was as much a musician as a doctor. In 1933 he joined the NSDAP because everyone else joined without any inner ties. He did not accept party positions because that would have irritated him too much and would have prevented him from devoting his free time to music [...] He also had various difficulties with the party, especially because he stayed away from meetings so as not to miss his church choir. "

In September 1933 Wahlmann was transferred back to the Hadamar State Hospital, where he remained employed until the beginning of his early retirement on January 1, 1937.

Since he was on leave from October 1, 1936, he moved to Heidelberg on October 3, 1936 and worked from there for the pharmaceutical industry ( Knoll ), working with his doctor colleagues for the newly discovered cardiazole shock method in psychiatric medicine Application advertised. (In Hadamar Wahlmann was the first doctor to use cardiazole shocks in Germany).

On June 28, 1940, Wahlmann was reactivated by the Hessen-Nassau district association as a senior physician for the Weilmünster state hospital due to a lack of staff and appointed to the provincial medical council.

In the Nazi euthanasia center at Hadamar

See also Hadamar Killing Center .

On the occasion of a visit by the department head for institutions in Hessau-Nassau, SS-Standartenführer and Provincial Councilor Fritz Bernotat in the Weilmünster institution, this elector announced his transfer to Hadamar. He had no objection to this, although he was certainly not denied the purpose of his use there. The longed-for opportunity to get a director's position was not given to him from the outset, since Masorsky had been drafted into the Navy as director of the Hadamar institute, but still retained his director's position. Wahlmann could only hope for a promotion.

On August 5, 1942, he was transferred to the Hadamar State Hospital as chief physician and was employed as a killing doctor as part of the second phase of the National Socialist “euthanasia” program. As chief physician and medical director, he was formally responsible for managing the institution, but this was largely in the hands of the ambitious and long-standing administrative director of the institution, Inspector Alfons Klein. Wahlmann attached great importance to titles and, according to his testimony, felt himself to be neglected towards Klein, the head of administration, preferred by the department head, so that he saw himself “in a completely degrading position” .

Although Wahlmann worked in Hadamar more as a tool than on his own initiative, out of conviction he was fundamentally positive about the National Socialist “euthanasia” program. He thought the new cost-intensive healing methods in psychiatry were only realistic if financial compensation was made through savings elsewhere. In this regard, he shared the view of those responsible for T4 that the savings should be made at the expense of the terminally ill. The principle must be to pay more attention to the curable and to eliminate the incurable or, to put it succinctly, “Heal and destroy” . Wahlmann made this unequivocal:

"I can not reconcile it [...] with my National Socialist attitude to use any medical measures, be they medicinal or otherwise, so that the lives of these individuals who are completely failing in human society are prolonged, especially in the current time of our struggle for existence every bed is needed for the most precious of our people . "

From August 13, 1942, selected patients came to Hadamar again. By March 24, 1945, 4,422 people died here, the majority of them caused by targeted malnutrition or killing by drug overdoses. Wahlmann later stated:

“There was not enough nutrition to keep the sick strong, so that numerous patients died of malnutrition and exhaustion […]. When I am asked whether the catering conditions are based on a conscious policy of the district association or of the LR. Bernotat, I believe I can answer this question in the affirmative with a clear conscience. In any case, I am of the firm opinion that Bernotat gave the prison officials, whom he made the actual heads of the institution and some of whom were personally or politically close to him, power of attorney to reduce the number of patients in this way, and that he also expressed his views on them in this respect has spoken openly. "

The new, more inconspicuous killing process got under way quickly. Wahlmann named the victims of the head nurse and the head nurse daily. As a rule, they passed the names on in writing in the form of slips of paper to the management of the wards, where the nursing staff administered the specified agents to the victims, which in the foreseeable future would lead to death. Some of the killings were also carried out in separate "death rooms". For this purpose sleeping pills and sedatives in tablet form ( veronal , luminal or trional ) as well as morphine or scopolamine injections and chloral dissolved in liquid were used. Some of the necessary medication was brought to Hadamar by Bernotat or sent directly by T4 headquarters. After the end of the war, a supply of five kilograms of veronal and luminal in powder form and a further 10,000 veronal tablets were found in the institution, which Wahlmann had ordered in January 1945. The effects of these agents were described by experts in the Hadamar trial in 1947 as " symptoms of poisoning ", " paralysis of the respiratory center ", " convulsive [...], tetanus-like [...] conditions [...]", "[s] secondary pneumonia " .

The circle of victims in the second phase of the “euthanasia” program was much larger than before. For example, mentally and physically ill forced laborers were included in the action, as were mentally ill soldiers of the Wehrmacht , when it was established that they could no longer be expected to be able to work again. Finally, even mentally ill foreign members of the Waffen-SS came to Hadamar from 1944 onwards from the “Neurological-psychiatric observation station for members of the Waffen-SS with nervous disorders” set up in the state sanatorium and nursing home in Giessen. When they were transferred to Hadamar, they were deemed to have been released from the SS and thus treated on an equal footing with the other "euthanasia" victims.

On August 24, 1943, Wahlmann received the long-awaited and ambitiously sought appointment to the provincial chief medical officer, which was a matter of prestige without an increase in salary, on the basis of the following justification by the district association's head of personnel:

"[I] n In view of your advanced age, your diligent work as a retired civil servant in the service of the administration of the Nassau district association and in view of the fact that you have been acting independently as a director in Hadamar for the past year as a substitute for the appointed director of the institution. "

The affixing of a changed name tag with his new title to the door of his office even before the certificate of appointment was presented to him also testified to his pronounced desire for recognition.

Processes

Elector with assistant nurse Karl Willig (right), April 1945
Elector During the interrogation in Hadamar

Before the end of the war, Wahlmann was arrested by the American army together with the staff of the Hadamar Nazi killing center on March 28, 1945. The official dismissal took place at the instigation of the military government in June 1945.

During the American Hadamar trial in Wiesbaden on October 15, 1945, Wahlmann was sentenced to life imprisonment by a US military court for the murder of Polish slave laborers in the Nazi extermination facility and transferred to Bruchsal prison. From there he came to Schwäbisch Hall on February 2, 1946 and finally to Landsberg Detention Center .

On April 2, 1946, the German public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main charged murder. In a judgment of March 26, 1947, the Frankfurt am Main regional court ruled that at least 900 cases of murder were subject to the death penalty . In the appeal proceedings before the Higher Regional Court in Frankfurt am Main , the judgment was confirmed, but now incitement to murder, instead of complicity as before , was found. After the Basic Law came into force on May 23, 1949 and the death penalty was abolished, the sentence was converted into a life sentence.

On October 20, 1953 Wahlmann was released early from Landsberg Detention Center. In 1955 he moved to Michelfeld in Baden-Württemberg, where he died on November 1, 1956.

The director of the Landesheilanstalt Eichberg and short-term superior of Wahlmann, Wilhelm Hinsen , summarized him as follows:

“He was inherently a very gifted man [...]. But life ran through his fingers because he wasn't hardworking, not focused. "

He was "popular with his patients" , a "certain good-naturedness" had "time and again [...] had a captivating effect on the patients" . However, Wahlmann was "better to his patients [...] than to the staff" , which earned him the nickname "Jesus Christ " in the college of Weilmünster .

Fonts

  • Wahlmann [Adolf]: The family care of the Landes-Heilanstalt Eichberg (Rheingau) . In: Die Irrenpflege , 33rd vol. (1929), pp. 11–15.
  • Adolf Wahlmann: On the case history of diabetic gangrene based on the experience in the surgical clinic in Kiel. , Hirt, Plön 1903 (also dissertation University of Kiel 1903)

literature

  • Wulf Steglich, Gerhard Kneuker (ed.): Encounter with euthanasia in Hadamar , Psychiatrie-Verlag 1985, ISBN 978-3-88414-068-0 / new edition Heimdall Verlag 2013, ISBN 978-3-939935-77-3
  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state . 11th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 .
  • Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews . 12th edition. Fischer-TB, Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
  • Ernst Klee: Adolf Wahlmann . Entry in ders .: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 652.
  • Henry Friedlander : The Road to Nazi Genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin, Berlin-Verlag, 1997. ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 .
  • Peter Sandner: Administration of the murder of the sick. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism . Psychosozial Verlag, Giessen 2003, ISBN 3-89806-320-8 .
  • "Relocated to Hadamar". The story of a Nazi "euthanasia" institution . Historical publication series of the State Welfare Association of Hesse, catalogs volume 2, Kassel 1994, ISBN 3-89203-011-1 .
  • Trial of Alfons Klein, Adolf Wahlmann, Heinrich Ruoff, Karl Willig, Adolf Merkle, Irmgard Huber, and Philipp Blum (the Hadamar trial). William Hodge, London 1949.
  • LG Frankfurt am Main, March 21, 1947 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. I, edited by Adelheid L. Rüter-Ehlermann, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1968, No. 17, pp. 303-379 Killing of the insane by poison gas and poison injection

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alice Platen-Hallermund : “The killing of the mentally ill in Germany. From the German Medical Commission at the American Military Court ”, Frankfurt / Main 1948, quoted from Klee:“ Euthanasia in the Nazi State ”, p. 190.
  2. ^ Ernst Klee : German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , p. 87.
  3. ↑ Testimony of the defendant Dr. Adolf Wahlmann in the Hadamar Trial in Frankfurt / Main, 1st day of the main hearing (February 24, 1947), quoted from Sandner: “Verwaltung des Krankenmordes”, p. 615.
  4. ^ Hadamar State Hospital. The chief physician, signed Prov.-Med.-Rat Wahlmann, to the Nassau district association (October 2, 1942), quoted from Sandner: “Verwaltung des Krankenmordes”, p. 643.
  5. ^ Statement by Dr. Adolf Wahlmann to the public prosecutor at the Frankfurt / M district court. on January 10, 1947, Main State Archives Wiesbaden, Department 461 No. 3/061, Volume 6, Pages 882 - 886, quoted from Sandner: “Verwaltung des Krankenmordes”, p. 591.
  6. ↑ Testimony of Dr. Franz-Josef K. as an expert in the Hadamar process Frankfurt / M. on March 4, 1947, the 5th day of the main hearing, Main State Archives Wiesbaden, Department 461 No. 32061, Volume 7, Sheet 185, quoted from Sandner: “Verwaltung des Krankenmordes”, p. 623.
  7. ↑ Landeswohlfahrtsverband –Archiv, inventory 11 (Gießen), 12, quoted from “Relocated to Hadamar”, pp. 149/150.
  8. ↑ a b Testimony of Dr. Wilhelm Hinsen in the Hadamar trial in Frankfurt / M. on March 10, 1947, 3rd day of the main hearing, quoted from Sandner: “Verwaltung des Krankenmordes”, p. 613.
personal data
SURNAME Wahlmann, Adolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wahlmann, Adolph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Head of the Nazi euthanasia center in Hadamar
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Koblenz-Ehrenbreitstein
DATE OF DEATH November 1, 1956
Place of death Michelfeld