Alfred Leu

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Alfred Carl Erich Wilhelm Leu (born May 11, 1900 in Schwerin , † 1975 ) was a German psychiatrist . Between 1940 and 1945 he was involved in the killing of at least 100 mentally handicapped children in Schwerin as part of the Nazi murders .

Life

Alfred Leu was the son of a railway employee. Coming from a humble background, he first completed an apprenticeship as a locksmith. He passed the high school diploma in Wismar at Easter 1920 and then studied medicine in Rostock , Innsbruck , Hamburg and again in Rostock. In Rostock he was awarded a doctorate in 1925 with his dissertation “On the frequency of general amyloidosis in dissection material before and after the war”. med. doctorate , 1926 Leu received his license to practice medicine.

From 1929 Leu worked, from 1936 as senior physician in the sanatorium and nursing home Sachsenberg-Lewenberg near Schwerin under the chief physician Johannes Fischer . In 1936 he was appointed to the Schwerin Hereditary Health Court. From August 1941 he headed the children's department in Sachsenberg, where at least 70 children were killed with veronal , luminal or morphine .

Leu joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933, became head of the NSV district headquarters and headed the NSDAP's racial office of the Mecklenburg Gauleitung .

After or at the end of the Second World War he left Mecklenburg and went west and practiced as a doctor in Holstein. From November 26, 1945 to May 28, 1948 he was interned in the UK. After his release, he made his living as an assistant locksmith. At the beginning of July 1949 he was hired as a second forensic doctor at the forensic medical institute in Cologne . After anonymous reports of involvement in Nazi euthanasia, he confessed in 1949 that he had "put to sleep" around 100 people. He then lost his job. A court case initiated after a public prosecutor's investigation before the Cologne jury court ended with acquittal on October 24, 1951, which was confirmed by the jury court on December 4, 1953 after a successful objection by the public prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice . Leu continued to practice as a psychiatrist and court expert in Cologne, most recently with the title of Senior Medical Officer .

According to recent research, more than 1000 people were killed as part of the Nazi euthanasia in Sachsenberg.

literature

  • August Blanck ; Axel Wilhelmi ; Gustav Willgeroth : The Mecklenburg doctors from the oldest times to the present . Schwerin 1929
  • Andreas Brooks: The events on the Sachsenberg as part of the National Socialist euthanasia program . Schwerin 2007
  • Kathleen Haack; Ekkehardt Kumbier: The National Socialist "euthanasia" campaign in Mecklenburg. An overview . In: Contemporary history regional. Messages from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Vol. 19 (2015), Issue 1, pp. 40–46
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd (revised) edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 369
  • 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 am Main 2004. ISBN 3-596-24364-5
  • Hanno Loewy; Bettina Winter [Ed.]: Nazi “euthanasia” in court. Fritz Bauer and the limits of legal coping . Frankfurt / Main; New York 1996. ISBN 3-593-35442-X ( digitized )
  • LG Cologne, December 4, 1953 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German criminal judgments for Nazi homicide crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XII, edited by Adelheid L Rüter-Ehlermann, HH Fuchs and CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1974, No. 383, pp. 1-60
  • Marc Zirlewanger: Biographical Lexicon of the Association of German Students , BoD, Norderstedt 2015, p. 506f

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: What they did - What they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews , Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 209
  3. ↑ Blanck / Wilhelmi / Willgeroth: Die Mecklenburgischen Aerzte, Schwerin 1929, p. 344
  4. ↑ Michael Buddrus [ed.]: Mecklenburg in the Second World War. The meetings of Gauleiter Friedrich Hildebrandt with the Nazi leadership bodies of Gau Mecklenburg 1939-1945. An edition of the meeting minutes. Edition Temmen, Bremen 2009. ISBN 978-3-8378-4000-1 , p. 145
  5. ↑ Kathleen Haack, Ekkehardt Kumbier: Crimes against the mentally ill and disabled in the time of National Socialism. An inventory with special consideration of Mecklenburg and specifically Rostock . In: Gisela Boeck and Hans-Uwe Lammel (eds.): The University of Rostock in the years 1933-1945. Lectures of the interdisciplinary lecture series of the working group "Rostock University and Science History" in the summer semester 2011 . Rostock 2012, pp. 227–242
personal data
SURNAME Leu, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leu, Alfred Carl Erich Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwerin
DATE OF DEATH 1975