Albert Ponsold

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Albert Ponsold (born April 22, 1900 in Libau ; † February 14, 1983 in Münster ) was a German forensic doctor and university professor.

Life

Early years, studies and starting a career

The son of a city secretary finished his school career in Petrograd in 1918 with the Abitur after attending the Livonian knight high school in Birkenruh near Wenden . Then he began to study medicine at the University of Dorpat . From the end of 1918 to 1919 he was a volunteer in the shock troop in the Baltic Landwehr and was involved in the capture of Riga in the spring of 1919 and as a member of the air force in the Baltic putsch, for which he was awarded the Baltic Cross .

Ponsold resumed his medical studies at the University of Berlin in 1919 and passed the first medical exam there in 1924. After the medical internship in Berlin, he was approved in May 1926 and was awarded a Dr. med. PhD . He then worked as an assistant doctor at several hospitals and from 1927 to 1930 research assistant at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Marburg and the University of Berlin. He then worked as a pathologist at the Stubenrauch Hospital in Berlin and from the beginning of July 1931 to the end of September 1932 assistant at the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Berlin. In the meantime, he completed a three-month course at the Social Hygiene Academy in Berlin in 1931 and was an assistant doctor at the Kiel University Neurological Clinic in 1932/33 . From 1933 he was an assistant at the Institute for Forensic and Social Medicine at the University of Halle . In 1934 he passed the examination to become a district doctor .

Ponsold had been married to Marie-Luise, nee Grote, since 1930. The couple had two daughters.

time of the nationalsocialism

In the course of the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he became a member of the SA in 1933 . He also belonged to the NS organizations NS-Ärztebund , the NSV and the NS- Dozentbund and became a storm doctor at the NSFK . At the beginning of May 1937 he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 4.047.408). Ponsold was a judge at the local hereditary health court and was admitted to the NSDAP public health office . He completed his habilitation in Halle in September 1935 and then worked as a private lecturer at the University of Halle, where he temporarily headed the Institute for Forensic and Social Medicine in 1936/37.

After the beginning of the Second World War he was an aviation pathologist with the Luftwaffe in Military District IV. At the beginning of October 1941, Ponsold accepted an appointment at the University of Poznan , where he held a professorship for forensic medicine and forensics and became director of the local institute for forensic medicine and forensics. At the end of the war he was drafted back into the Wehrmacht and was a pathologist with Army Group West .

post war period

After the end of the war he made his living at first with agricultural activities and then worked in the "epidemic control" and as a judicial expert in Düsseldorf .

From 1948 Ponsold was a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Münster . He was an employee of the editorial board of the journal Grenzgebiete der Medizin . From April 1953 he was a member of the first Federal Health Council. He was President of the German Society for Forensic Medicine in 1961/62. At the end of September 1968 Ponsold retired in Münster , but continued his previous activities at the University of Münster until March 1970. He was followed in 1970 to the chair and director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine Hans W. Sachs .

His research focus within forensic medicine was the area of ​​road safety in connection with alcohol and medication.

Ponsold's memoirs were published in 1980 under the title Der Strom was der Neva , in which he denied his membership in the NSDAP.

Reviewer in the Hetzel trial

On the basis of a controversial expert opinion by Ponsold, the master butcher Hans Hetzel was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 1955 for the murder of Magdalena Gierth in a publicly effective process. Ponsold had constructed a sequence of events, which the court agreed: “The defendant may have first hit Ms. Gierth on the nose and face, whereupon she probably fled. The defendant probably ran after her and hit her on the head. After these beatings she collapsed, whereupon he put the noose around her neck and pulled it tight ... The defendant then bit the woman in the right breast and stomach. He then continued to practice anal intercourse during the three to eight-minute agony, and perhaps even after death. All of this was done with the aim of sexual satisfaction, which runs like a red thread through the course of the crime. "Hetzel himself had testified that he had taken Ms. Gierth in his truck and, after advances, had consensual sexual intercourse with her twice in quick succession. During repeated sexual intercourse, Ms. Gierth suddenly collapsed and, after his discovery, was dead. Afterwards he acted in a panic: “He got dressed, picked up the body, loaded it into the car and drove off somewhere. On the way he threw the woman's clothes out of the window, steering with one hand. And on the way it occurred to him that earlier, in 1949 and 1952, the corpses of naked women had been found on a distant street, because of which all investigations had been unsuccessful. He then headed for this street, stopped there, threw the body down the embankment and made off. Besides, he had previously cleaned the body with the rags of one of the pieces of clothing he had torn apart. It smelled bad and was damp. Because of the smell, he accepted the excrement of feces and ran a rag between the legs of the corpse and penetrated the anus. "

After a successful reopening of the case , Hetzel was acquitted in another process in 1969 . Hetzel's lawyer had been able to call on forensic experts as experts, who all agreed with the findings made on Gierth's corpse in 1953 and Hetzel's statements about the course of events. The forensic doctor Otto Prokop from East Berlin , who was consulted as an expert in the proceedings, criticized in this context: "Things were collected that did not even exist."

Fonts (selection)

  • Disinfection of the hands and the surgical field. Berlin 1926 (dissertation).
  • Intra-abdominal skeletonization and mummification of fetuses in experimental extrauterine abortion. Halle 1935 (habilitation thesis).
  • Textbook of forensic medicine including medical law, medical class and insurance medicine. Thieme, Stuttgart 1950 (published in three editions - revised).
  • Motorists and disenchanters. Neuland-Verl. Ges., Hamburg 1953.
  • Alcohol and traffic. Hamburg 1957 (published in three editions - revised).
  • The river was the Neva. From the life of a coroner. Bläschke, Sankt Michael 1980.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Militzke, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-86189-249-9 , p. 168.
  2. ↑ a b c Entry on Albert Ponsold in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis
  3. ↑ Who is who? Volume 17, Schmidt-Römhild, 1971, p. 834.
  4. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 469.
  5. ^ Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Militzke, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-86189-249-9 , p. 170.
  6. ↑ Deutsches Ärzteblatt . 89, issue 16, April 17, 1992 (83) A1-1465.
  7. ↑ German Biographical Encyclopedia. 2nd, revised and expanded edition, 2007, p. 24.
  8. ↑ a b Quoted from: Gerhard Mauz : Still questions about the rectum? SPIEGEL reporter Gerhard Mauz in the Hetzel reopening trial. In: Der Spiegel . Issue 45/1969, November 3, 1969, p. 116.
  9. ↑ Gisela Friedrichsen : ... because he is the husband. SPIEGEL reporter Gisela Friedrichsen on the temptations of forensic medicine. In: Der Spiegel. Issue 15, April 9, 1990, pp. 119 ff.
  10. ↑ Quoted from: Gerhard Mauz: Any questions about the rectum? SPIEGEL reporter Gerhard Mauz in the Hetzel reopening trial. In: Der Spiegel. Edition 45/1969, November 3, 1969, p. 118.
personal data
SURNAME Ponsold, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German coroner
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Libau
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1983
Place of death Muenster