August Shepherd

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August Hirt (born April 29, 1898 in Mannheim , † June 2, 1945 in Schönenbach ) was an anatomist of German and Swiss nationality. He held professorships at the Universities of Heidelberg , Greifswald and Frankfurt as well as the Reich University of Strasbourg . Hirt carried out experiments with the warfare agent mustard gas (lost) on prisoners of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and was instrumental in the murder of 86 Jewish prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp , who were to be used to set up the Strasbourg skull collection at the anatomical institute there.

Life

Education and academic background

Hirt, son of a Swiss businessman, attended the Karl-Friedrich-Gymnasium in Mannheim. In 1914, the high school student volunteered to participate in the First World War . In October 1916 he was injured by a bullet in the upper jaw. Awarded the Iron Cross 2nd class , Hirt returned to Mannheim and passed his Abitur in 1917. He then studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg . He was a member of the Normannia fraternity in Heidelberg . In 1921 he also took German citizenship . Hirt received his doctorate in 1922 with the work The borderline of the sympathetic nervous system in some dinosaurs . He then worked at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Heidelberg, and in 1925 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on the fiber structure of the renal nerves . From 1930 he was an associate professor at the institute.

August Hirt joined the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur in September 1932 . On April 1, 1933, he became a member of the SS (SS no. 100.414), in which Hirt was promoted to Sturmbannführer until 1944 . From March 1, 1942, he was a member of the Reichsführer SS Personal Staff . On May 1, 1937, Hirt became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 4.012.784).

From April 1, 1936, Hirt was full professor and director of the Anatomical Institute of the University of Greifswald , and on October 1, 1938, he went to the University of Frankfurt in the same position . As a senior physician in the army from August 1939 to April 1941, Hirt took part in the western campaign. From October 1, 1941, he was director of the anatomical institute of the newly founded Reich University of Strasbourg .

Hirt was married and had a son and a daughter.

Scientific work and human experiments

Since the beginning of his professional activity, August Hirt has primarily dealt with the influence of the sympathetic nervous system on organ systems. From the end of the 1920s, he was also occupied with so-called intravital microscopy, a form of fluorescence microscopy for examining living tissue. Hirt carried out this research largely in collaboration with the pharmacologist Philipp Ellinger , who was dismissed under the law to restore the civil service in 1933 and then emigrated to England. Hirt propagated the use of this technology in the treatment of cancer and damage caused by the warfare agent mustard gas.

Lost attempts

During his invitation to the Wehrmacht was Hirt 1939 briefly to the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology defense of the Military Medical Academy drafted in Berlin, where he experiments with the chemical warfare agent mustard gas ( Lost conducted). In the experiments, Hirt had investigated the therapeutic effect of trypaflavin on mustard damage, both in animal experiments and on two test subjects from the military academy. According to Hirt, the healing of the damaged tissue was “undoubtedly accelerated.” The head of the institute, toxicologist Wolfgang Wirth , said in an interrogation after the end of the war that “there was nothing wrong with the matter. Hirt himself made experiments with us and also demonstrated some. The whole thing always developed with a lot of noise ”. According to Wirth, they asked for Hirt's replacement and rejected the Army Inspection with regard to his attempts. Hirt presented the "limitation of his command" as the reason for the unfinished experiments.

In Frankfurt, Hirt had given rats prophylactic retinol (vitamin A) in high doses, which, according to his account, could extend the survival time of the animals. According to Hirt's statement, no corresponding attempts were made on humans because he had to return to his unit at the beginning of the western campaign .

At the opening of the University of Strasbourg on November 23, 1941, Hirt met Wolfram Sievers , Reich Managing Director of the Research Association of German Ahnenerbe . At the end of the year, Rudolf Brandt , Heinrich Himmler's advisor, instructed Sievers in writing that Hirt “should be given the opportunity to conduct experiments of all kinds with prisoners and professional criminals who can no longer be released anyway, and with the people scheduled for execution”. On January 17, 1942 Sievers asked Hirt about a possible collaboration in a project to "research and control the insects that affect humans" that Himmler had ordered. In the course of the spring, Hirt was finally scheduled to do research on rat control . Hirt considered the possibility of using Lost and, despite a lack of staff and laboratory animals, started the experiments on animals in Strasbourg. Wolfram Sievers suggested the Dachau concentration camp for human experiments, and the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp was ultimately selected . In July, the Institute for Defense Scientific Purpose Research was founded in the "Ahnenerbe" and Hirt was appointed head of Department H (Hirt) . In order to avoid being drafted into the Wehrmacht again, Hirt was accepted into the Waffen SS .

In November 1942, August Hirt, together with the Air Force doctor Karl Wimmer and the anatomist Anton Kiesselbach, began the human experiments in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. In October prisoners were selected for the experiments and attempts were made to make them fit for the experiments by means of increased food rations. The first series of tests was discontinued due to the poor quality of the chemical, but with a new delivery the experiments went to Hirt's satisfaction. The former Kapo Ferdinand Holl described the experiments after the end of the war: Under Hirt's supervision, Karl Wimmer applied the liquid warfare agent to the prisoners' forearms, after ten hours burns appeared on the bodies, the prisoners suffered severe pain, and some became blind. The wounds were photographed daily. The first inmate died after five or six days, followed by seven others. The destroyed internal organs of the dead were removed and examined, and the survivors were transported to other camps after about two months. According to Josef Kramer , who was in command of the camp from May 1942, and a former prisoner, the internist Otto Bickenbach was also involved in these experiments.

Further experiments with lost prophylaxis through the administration of vitamins were mostly carried out by Otto Bickenbach under Hirt's responsibility. On April 12, 1943, the camp commandant from Natzweiler-Struthof reported the completion of a twenty cubic meter gas chamber. Four inmates selected by Bickenbach had to enter the chamber and then crush a gas-filled ampoule. According to Holl, during his time in the camp (until 1943) a total of about 150 people, divided into groups of 30 prisoners, were subjected to these experiments. In the first groups, an average of seven or eight prisoners died; the survivors were sent to other concentration and extermination camps.

The urgency of the experiments with warfare agents was warned by Karl Brandt in March 1944 , whereupon Wolfram Sievers sent him a report on Hirt's experiments. Furthermore, a treatment proposal for warfare agent injuries with mustard was submitted, which Hirt and Wimmer had written on the basis of the tests carried out.

Skeleton collection

Memorial plaque for the prisoners murdered in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp at the Institute for Anatomy of the University of Strasbourg

Hirt's report on his previous research into Lost and the possibilities of his fluorescence microscopy called “ intravital microscopy ”, which Sievers passed on to Brandt on February 9, 1942, was accompanied by a “proposal to secure the skulls of Jewish-Bolshevik commissioners” prisoner political commissars to be systematically measured and then murdered in order to bring their skulls to a collection in Strasbourg .

“There are extensive collections of skulls from almost all races and peoples. Only from the Jews are so few skulls available to science that their processing does not permit any reliable results. The war in the east now offers us the opportunity to remedy this shortcoming. In the Jewish Bolshevik commissars, who embody a disgusting but characteristic subhumanity, we have the opportunity to acquire a tangible scientific document by securing their skulls. […] The person authorized to secure the material […] has to take a predetermined series of photographs and anthropological measurements and, as far as possible, to determine the origin, dates of birth and other personal details. After the subsequent death of the Jew, whose head must not be injured, he separates the head from the torso and sends it to its destination, embedded in a preservative liquid in specially created and easily lockable metal containers. "

- Siever's letter with Hirt's preliminary report to Brandt, February 9, 1942

Whether the suggestion actually came from Hirt was repeatedly judged differently. When the anthropologist Bruno Beger was indicted in 1968, the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt am Main assumed that he had written the text. In its judgment of April 1971, however, the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court came to the conclusion that Beger was not aware of the ultimate fate of those affected during his surveying work. Bruno Beger, who works for the “Ahnenerbe”, came into contact with August Hirt through the mediation of Wolfram Sievers. Within the “Ahnenerbes”, the project, which was later redesigned into a “skeleton collection of foreign races”, was called “Beger's order”.

In June 1943 Bruno Beger and Hans Fleischhacker selected 115 Jewish prisoners in the Auschwitz concentration camp . The women among them were all previously housed in Block 10 of the Auschwitz main camp. It was a place for medical experiments. The victims were measured anthropometrically and their personal data recorded. At the beginning of August 1943, 86 of these prisoners arrived at the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp . They were murdered in the camp's gas chamber by camp commandant Josef Kramer in the course of August ; Hirt had personally given him the required prussic acid salt. The intention to prepare the skeletons for a collection was not realized. The bodies were discovered when Strasbourg was liberated and buried in the Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg-Cronenbourg in 1951 .

In 2015, further remains of Hirt's victims were found in the Forensic Institute of what is now the University of Strasbourg . They are to be buried alongside the other victims in the Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg.

End of war and death

Hirt's wife and son were killed on September 25, 1944 during a bombing raid on Strasbourg. After the liberation of Strasbourg at the end of November 1944, August Hirt fled with his daughter to Tübingen, where he stayed until the Allies occupied Württemberg, then went into hiding with farmers in the Black Forest. On June 2, 1945 he shot himself in Schönenbach and was buried in the Grafenhausen cemetery.

Hirt was searched for in Switzerland until the end of the 1950s, and a French military court in Metz sentenced him to death in absentia on December 23, 1953.

Aftermath

In 2004 the historian Hans-Joachim Lang published the book The Names of Numbers, in which he published his research on the crime and the 86 victims. Lang identified the names of the victims on the basis of the prisoner numbers that an Alsatian employee at the Strasbourg Institute of Anatomy, Henry Henrypierre, noted, and was able to reconstruct their résumés on the basis of extensive further research. On this basis, it was possible to erect a tombstone on the mass grave in the Jewish cemetery in Strasbourg, in which the victims are buried, on which all 86 names are recorded. The tombstone was unveiled on December 11, 2005 at a public ceremony attended by relatives of the victims.

In the second scene of the first act, Rolf Hochhuth's first work Der Stellvertreter from 1963 lets Hirt play bowling in the company of other National Socialist figures such as Adolf Eichmann . He represents the type of Nazi scientist who is characterized by "scientifically cultivated idiocy and cruelty, [which] even exceeded the standard of many prominent SS medics in the industry" (Hochhuth).

literature

  • Udo Benzenhöfer : August Hirt - Criminal human experiments with poison gas and "terminal" anthropology. In: Udo Benzenhöfer (eds.): Mengele, Hirt, Holfelder, Berner, von Verschuer, Kranz: Frankfurt university doctors of the Nazi era. Klemm & Oelschläger, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-932577-97-0 , pp. 21-42.
  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-10-039306-6 .
  • Michael H. Kater : The “Ahnenerbe” of the SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-55858-7 .
  • Hans-Joachim Lang : The names of the numbers. How it was possible to identify the 86 victims of a Nazi crime. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 978-3-455-09464-0 .
  • Hans-Joachim Lang: The women from Block 10. Medical experiments in Auschwitz. Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-455-50222-0 .
  • Hans-Joachim Lang: A place in the skull of modern research. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 20th February 2019
  • Klaus Morath: The lonely death of the Nazi doctor . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . 15th November 2018.
  • Katrin Müßig: Prof. Dr. med. August Hirt 1898–1945. Life and work. Regensburg, Univ., Med. Diss. 2014.
  • Julien Reitzenstein: Himmler's Researcher. Defense science and medical crime in the "Ahnenerbe" of the SS. Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-76657-1 .
  • Julien Reitzenstein: The SS-Ahnenerbe and the "Strasbourg skull collection". Fritz Bauer's last case. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-428-15313-8 .
  • Angelika Uhlmann: August Hirt and his colleagues Kiesselbach, Wimmer and Mayer. The careers before the University of Strasbourg. Rev. All. Pays Lang. Everything. 43 (3) 2011, pp. 333-340.
  • Patrick Wechsler: The Faculté de Medecine de la “Reichsuniversität Strasbourg” (1941–1945) a l'heure nationale-socialiste. Strasbourg 1991, pp. 126–129 ( work on the document server of the University of Freiburg ).

Documentaries

Web links

Commons : August Hirt  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lang, Hans-Joachim .: The names of the numbers: how it was possible to identify the 86 victims of a Nazi crime . Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl, 2007, ISBN 3-596-16895-3 .
  2. ↑ The year 1930 is described by Klee ( Auschwitz, p. 356), Benzenhöfer ( Hirt, p. 23) and Bauer ( The University of Heidelberg and its medical faculty 1933–1945. Upheavals and continuities. In: 1999. Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20 . and 21. Century. 11 (1996), No. 4, p. 11). Wechsler erroneously names 1933 as the year of the extraordinary professorship.
  3. ^ Bauer, p. 11.
  4. ↑ a b Kater: Ahnenerbe, p. 248.
  5. ↑ Biographical information - unless otherwise stated - according to Patrick Wechsler: La Faculté de Medecine de la “Reichsuniversität Strasbourg” (1941–1945) a l'heure nationale-socialiste. Strasbourg 1991, pp. 126–129 ( work on the document server of the University of Freiburg ).
  6. ↑ Photo Shepherd and Wife, Section 10.3.6. Experiences médicales.
  7. ↑ List of Hirt's writings according to Wechsler, p. 126 ff.
  8. ^ Sievers 'letter with Hirts' preliminary report to Brandt, February 9, 1942, document NO-085 , available in the Nuremberg Trials Project of Harvard Law School. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  9. ^ Sievers letter of June 2, 1942 with Hirts' report to Brandt, Document NO-97 , available in the Nuremberg Trials Project of Harvard Law School. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  10. ↑ Quoted from Klee: Auschwitz, p. 358.
  11. ↑ a b letter from Sievers dated June 2, 1942.
  12. ↑ Brandt's letter to Sievers of December 29, 1941, document NO-1491, quoted from Michael H. Kater: The "Ahnenerbe" of the SS 1935–1945: a contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich . Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-55858-7 , p. 247.
  13. ^ Letter from Sievers of January 17, 1942 to Hirt, Document NO-791 , available in the Harvard Law School's Nuremberg Trials Project . Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  14. ↑ Julien Reitzenstein : August Hirt . In: skull-collection.com, accessed January 13, 2020.
  15. ↑ Holl's testimony of November 3, 1946, Document NO-590 , available in the Nuremberg Trials Project at Harvard Law School. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  16. ↑ Klee: Auschwitz, p. 366.
  17. ^ Kater: Ahnenerbe p. 248.
  18. ↑ Mitscherlich, Medicine Without Humanity, p. 169.
  19. ^ Letter from Hirt to Sievers dated April 23, 1943, after Klee: Auschwitz, p. 381.
  20. ↑ Klee: Auschwitz, p. 381.
  21. ↑ Mitscherlich: Medicine, p. 171.
  22. ↑ August Hirt, Karl Wimmer: Suggested treatment for warfare agent injuries with mustard. 1944. Document NO-99 , available from Harvard Law School's Nuremberg Trials Project . Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  23. ^ Sievers 'letter with Hirts' preliminary report to Brandt, February 9, 1942, quoted in Mitscherlich, Medicine, pp. 225 f., Document NO-085 , available in the Nuremberg Trials Project of Harvard Law School. Retrieved January 13, 2020.
  24. ↑ Klee: Auschwitz, p. 359.
  25. ^ Lang: The names of the numbers, p. 149.
  26. ^ Excerpts from the proceedings against Hans Helmut Fleischhacker, ( Memento of July 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) LG Frankfurt / M. from March 5, 1971, 4 Ks 1/70.
  27. ↑ Lang: The women of Block 10, pp. 182–192.
  28. ^ Excerpts from the proceedings against Bruno Beger and Wolf-Dietrich Wolff ( Memento from July 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) LG Frankfurt / M. dated April 6, 1971, 4 Ks 1/70.
  29. ^ Stefan Ulrich: Museum of horror . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , July 23, 2015.
  30. ^ Lang: The names of the numbers, p. 193.
  31. ^ Lang: The names of the numbers, p. 214.
  32. ↑ Klaus Morath: The lonely death of the Nazi doctor . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . November 15, 2018, accessed January 13, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Shepherd, August
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anatomist, director of the Anatomical Institute of the Reich University of Strasbourg
DATE OF BIRTH April 29, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Mannheim
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1945
Place of death Schönenbach