Berthold Kihn

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Berthold Kihn (born March 10, 1895 in Schöllkrippen ; † January 19, 1964 in Erlangen ) was a German psychiatrist and neurologist who was a T4 assessor and professor at the University of Jena at the time of National Socialism .

Life

Until 1933

Kihn, son of a senior government councilor, completed his school career at the grammar school in Schweinfurt with the Abitur . From 1914 he studied medicine at the University of Würzburg and received his license to practice medicine there in 1921 . In the same year he received his doctorate under Karl Bernhard Lehmann . He then worked briefly as an assistant at the Pathological Institute in Würzburg and the Lohr Sanatorium . Further short stays followed at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin of the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. In 1923 he began his service at the Psychiatric University Clinic in Erlangen . Also in 1923 he became a member of the Bund Oberland and before 1933 of the DNVP . In 1927 he received his habilitation . At times he also worked for Julius Wagner-Jauregg at the Lower Austrian State Healing and Nursing Institution for the Nervous and Mentally Ill in Vienna .

Even before the seizure of power by the Nazis , he published in 1932 in the General Journal of Psychiatry a post titled: The elimination of inferior from society : "In the fight against the inferiority of any action is allowed".

time of the nationalsocialism

Kihn was a member of the SA from 1933 , where he achieved the rank of senior squad leader. Regarding his National Socialist attitude, he became an associate professor at the University of Erlangen in 1934 . From November 1936 to the end of September 1938, Kihn was acting head of the Stadtroda state hospital . His work there was characterized by savings in the care of "incurably" mentally ill people, which led to premature deaths there. From October 1938 to 1945 he was director of the Psychiatric University Clinic in Jena. At the same time, Kihn was appointed full professor to succeed Hans Berger at the University of Jena , where he became dean in 1944 . He was also a judge at the Hereditary Health Supreme Court in Jena.

In the early summer of 1940, Kihn was recruited as an external expert for Aktion T4 at a secret conference in Berlin and was active in this role from June 5, 1940. Kihn processed registration forms for patients from sanatoriums and nursing homes and in 1941 was a member of a selection committee at the Bethel establishment. Kihn was directly involved in the euthanasia crimes. Kihn also worked on a euthanasia law ("Law on assisted suicide for the terminally ill"). This law was passed in October 1940 but did not take legal effect.

After the end of the war

After the end of the war, Kihn fled Jena after he was temporarily not allowed to leave his apartment there. In September 1945 he was informed in writing by the state director that he would be expelled from the university in Jena immediately because of his membership in the NSDAP and his commitment to the party's goals. Kihn then worked as a resident psychiatrist in Erlangen and from 1951 headed a private sanatorium he founded. In addition, from 1952 he was an honorary professor at the University of Erlangen, where he held lectures in the fields of psychiatry, neurology and medical psychotherapy.

According to an article in the magazine Der Spiegel , in which Kihn's name also appeared, an investigation was initiated against Kihn. Former colleagues confirmed his work as a T4 reviewer and participation in review meetings. After initially denying the allegations, he finally admitted in mid-June 1962 that he had entered a plus sign on up to 20 registration forms. He believed that it was only a matter of separating the patients into able-bodied and non-able-to-work. Only after he had learned that the patients marked as euthanasia were being killed did he no longer see any plus signs on the registration forms. The preliminary investigation initiated by the public prosecutor at the Nuremberg-Erlangen Regional Court against Kihn for aiding and abetting murder was discontinued on January 22, 1963, as Kihn could not be proven in the context of the euthanasia crimes.

Kihn was a close friend of Ernst Speer , helped him to be a lecturer in Jena and wrote the introduction to Speer's Festschrift. This in turn dedicated his textbook to him. 1995 appeared in the student magazine “Dr. Mabuse ”the article“ Complete Memory ”, in which Kihn's role in National Socialism and his activities during the early Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks was criticized. Horst Eberhard Richter wrote in 1996 in the Lindau Texts that he had seen a professor involved in the Nazi “euthanasia”, “here as a lecturer at one of the first Lindau psychotherapy weeks” and thus established a direct reference, albeit without naming a name.

Fonts (selection)

  • Studies on the growth of some corynebacteria and mycobacteria at low temperatures. Dissertation. University of Würzburg, 1921.
  • Treatment of quaternary syphilis with acute infections. Their position in therapy, their methodology and clinic, their relationship to pathology and public life. Results and observations. Bergmann, Munich 1927, doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-642-91799-8 .
  • The elimination of the inferior from society. In: General journal for psychiatry. 98, 1932, pp. 387-404.
  • Kihn B. Race and Neurological Disorders. In: J. Schottky (Ed.): Race and disease. Munich, JF Lehmanns 1937.
  • The diseases of regression and old age. In: Wilhelm Weygandt (Ed.): Textbook of nervous and mental diseases. Marhold, Halle 1935.
  • with Hans Luxenburger : Die Schizophrenie (= handbook of hereditary diseases. Ed. by Arthur Gütt . Volume 2). Thieme, Leipzig 1940.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Title entry , dissertation catalog of the University Library Basel , accessed on August 30, 2016.
  2. ↑ a b c d Hanns Hippius (Ed.): University colloquia on schizophrenia. Volume 1, Darmstadt 2003, p. 52 f.
  3. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 308.
  4. ↑ a b Jennifer Hill: On the fate of male patients in the Jena psychiatric and nervous clinic 1933 to 1945 after they were transferred to the state hospitals in Stadtroda and Blankenhain. Dissertation. University of Jena, 2008, p. 7 f. (on-line)
  5. ↑ Quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 308.
  6. ↑ 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. 168 f.
  7. ^ Ernst Klee: "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life". Frankfurt am Main 1983, pp. 227 f., 241 f.
    Heinz Schott, Rainer Tölle: History of Psychiatry. Disease teachings, wrong turns, forms of treatment. Munich 2006, p. 543.
  8. ↑ Philipp Mettauer: Forgetting and Remembering. The Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks from a historical perspective . Lecture on April 21 and 28, 2010 as part of the Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks in the online archive of the Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks, accessed on June 5, 2019
  9. ↑ Matthias Hamann: Complete memory. About the history of the Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks , in: Dr. med. Mabuse, Health Care Journal, No. 95, Volume 20, April / May 1995
  10. ↑ Horst-Eberhard Richter: Memory work and the image of man in psychotherapy . Lindau Texts 1996 in the online archive of the Lindau Psychotherapy Weeks, accessed on June 5, 2019
  11. ↑ This collection formed the pseudo-scientific basis for the Nazi murders.
personal data
SURNAME Kihn, Berthold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and neurologist and T4 reviewer
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Schöllkrippen
DATE OF DEATH January 19, 1964
Place of death gain