Alexander Berg

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Alexander Berg (born February 28, 1911 in Buchwalde , East Prussia ; † in the early 1990s in Hildesheim ) was a German doctor of medicine and medical historian .

Life

Berg was a student of the medical historian Paul Diepgen in Berlin . In 1935 he published a work on colic and uterine diseases in folk medicine (his dissertation at Diepgen), which was reprinted in 1977. After receiving his doctorate, he was a clerk for folk medicine in Heinrich Himmler's personal staff . From 1938 to 1945 he was Diepgen's assistant at the Medical History Institute of the University of Berlin, where he completed his habilitation in 1942 . He also represented Diepgen several times in the main lecture.

He joined the NSDAP and SS in 1933. From 1938 he was in the SS Ahnenerbe of Heinrich Himmler provided as head of folk medicine, but it did not come after the war broke it. The subject was close to Himmler's heart (especially homeopathy ), but it was classified as independent of and not as important to the war effort as the work (human experiments in the concentration camp) of the physician Sigmund Rascher , for example , which was also integrated into the Ahnenerbe during the war for organizational reasons .

During the Second World War he was also used as a medical officer in the Waffen SS . From 1943 he was Hauptsturmführer in the Waffen SS.

After the war he worked as a radiologist in Hildesheim from 1949 . He strove to gain a foothold in the history of medicine at the university again (with the support of Gernot Rath in Göttingen). When he retired from Berlin to Göttingen in 1963, the medical historian Erwin H. Ackerknecht, who taught in Zurich, intervened and a scandal broke out. In 1964 the Venia Legendi was withdrawn from him. As a result, historians of science left the German Society for the History of Medicine, Natural Science and Technology , who instead founded the Society for the History of Science .

His co-author of the medical history book from 1942 The Face of the Germanic Doctor in Four Centuries Bernward Gottlieb was also SS-Obersturmführer and in 1960 became an adjunct professor of medical history at the University of Saarbrücken. While Berg expressed himself more moderately, Gottlieb became increasingly radicalized. He was sponsored by the SS, completed his habilitation at Diepgen in Berlin, became head of a newly founded institute for the history of medicine of the SS in Berlin (in competition with Diepgen's Institute) and then in Graz (as well as lecturer and temporarily commanding officer at the SS Medical Academy) and was installed as the successor to Diepgen's chair in Berlin through pressure from the SS in 1945 (whereby a dispute between the offices typical of National Socialist Germany developed, in this case between the SS and Reich Education Minister Bernhard Rust ). Diepgen was therefore still more of a mountain as a hope for the next generation and a representative of National Socialist medical historiography. When asked about the successor to Diepgen's chair in 1944, Berg played no role.

Fonts

  • The disease complex of colic and uterine diseases in folk medicine and the history of medicine with special consideration of folk medicine in East Prussia , treatises on the history of medicine and natural sciences, volume 9, Berlin: Ebering 1935, pp. 1–135, Nendeln / Lichtenstein: Kraus Reprint 1977
  • with Bernward J. Gottlieb: The face of the Germanic doctor in four centuries: with two hundred illustrations , Berlin: Rembrandt Verlag 1942 (with a preface by Reichsarzt SS and police ER Grawitz )
  • On the history of radiation therapy , in: Sudhoffs archive for the history of medicine and natural sciences, Volume 37, 1953, p. 210
  • Editor with Hugo Freund: History of Microscopy , 3 volumes, Umschau-Verlag 1963 to 1966

literature

  • Christoph Mörgeli , Anke Jobmann: Erwin H. Ackerknecht and the Berg / Rath affair of 1964: on the coming to terms with the past of German medical historians , in: Robert Jütte (ed.), Medicine, Society and History, 16 (for 1997), yearbook of the Institute for History der Medizin der Robert Bosch Stiftung, Franz Steiner 1998, pp. 63–124
  • Andreas Frewer : Medical History and "New Ethics" in Berlin: Specialized Politics, Nazi Discipline and SS Morality (1939-1945) , in: Sabine Schleiermacher, Udo Schagen (ed.), The Charité in the Third Reich. On the servitude of medical science under National Socialism, Paderborn: Schöningh 2008, pp. 85-104
  • Florian Bruns, Andreas Frewer: History as a Political Issue: Medical Historians in Berlin and Graz in the Service of the Nazi State , in: Medicine, Society and History, Yearbook of the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation, Volume 24, 2005, p. 151 -180

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Florian Bruns, Andreas Frewer: History as a political issue: Medical historian Berlin and Graz in the service of the Nazi state , in: Medicine, Society and History, Yearbook of the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation, Volume 24, 2005, p. 160
  2. ↑ Martin Mattulat: Medical ethics from a historical perspective: On the change in medical moral concepts in the work of Georg Benno Gruber (1884-1977) , Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2007, p. 29
  3. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 39
  4. ↑ Michael Kater, Das Ahnenerbe der SS 1935 to 1945, Oldenbourg 2006, p. 258
  5. ^ Polish website with SS numbers (Berg had SS number 274.746), with dates of birth
  6. ↑ Ralf Forsbach, Die 68er und die Medizin, V & R unipress Göttingen 2011, p. 55f
  7. ↑ Florian Bruns, The Institutionalized Medical History and National Socialism, Facets of a Close Relationship between Purposes 1933–1945, in: Matthis Krischl, Mathias Schmidt, Dominik Groß (eds.), Medical Associations in National Socialism, LIT Verlag, Berlin 2016, p. 54
  8. ↑ The assessments of the richly illustrated work, which mainly consists of a series of brief biographies, fluctuate. Some thought it was racist propagandistic, others ( Michael Kater ) thought it was harmless, except for the omission of the Jewish doctors. Bruns, Frewer, 2005, p. 164
  9. ↑ Thomas Jaehn, The medical historian Paul Diepgen (1878–1966), dissertation (medicine), Humboldt University Berlin 1991. After Jaehn this consideration may also have been a precaution with a view to the future. Quoted from Bruns, Frewer, 2005, loc. cit., p. 160
  10. ↑ The latter refused him until 1939 and referred him to Walter Artelt in Frankfurt, whose seminar Gottlieb had previously attended; After Gottlieb's career with the SS, however, he had nothing against the SS delegating Gottlieb to his institute.
  11. ↑ Florian Bruns, 2016, loc. cit., p. 57
  12. ↑ The faculty placed Walter Artelt in 1st place, followed by Edith Heischkel-Artelt and Gottlieb in 3rd place
  13. ↑ Anke Jobmann also wrote a thesis on this at the University of Hamburg: The Berg case - an "unpleasant affair", 1997
personal data
SURNAME Berg, Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician and medical historian
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Buchwalde
DATE OF DEATH after 1990
Place of death Hildesheim