Berthold Mueller

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Berthold Mueller (born January 14, 1898 in Memel ; † July 9, 1976 in Heidelberg ) was a German forensic doctor and university professor.

Life

First years, studies and career entry

Berthold Mueller was the son of the high school teacher Hermann Mueller. He had been married to Liselotte, nee Vorbringer, since 1928. The couple had four sons and a daughter. He spent his school days in East Prussia and Berlin and graduated from high school in Insterburg in 1915 . He then took part in the First World War as a volunteer and was first employed in an artillery regiment and then in the medical service. After the end of the war, Mueller was discharged from the army with the rank of field surgeon and worked with the detachment of Randow in the Baltic States . He continued the studies he had begun in between semesters during the war at the University of Königsberg and completed it in 1922. After he received his license in 1922 and was awarded a Dr. med. received his doctorate , he was first at the University of Königsberg assistant doctor at the Institute of Pathology and in 1925 at the Institute for Forensic and Social Medicine. From 1926 he worked with Willy Vorkastner at the University of Greifswald and followed this to the University of Frankfurt am Main in 1927 and to the University of Halle in 1930 . Mueller had previously completed his habilitation in Frankfurt in 1929 with a paper on the inheritance of fingerberry patterns . After Vorkastner unexpectedly died of a heart attack, Mueller temporarily took over the chair of forensic medicine at the University of Halle until Kurt Walcher officially succeeded him in this position.

Political activity and the time of National Socialism

Mueller, who was a member of the DVP from 1920 to 1922 and of the Deutschvölkische Freedom Party from 1923 , joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.928.356) after the transfer of power to the National Socialists at the beginning of May 1933 and the SA in the same year as a reserve doctor .

At a meeting of the Society for Forensic and Social Medicine in September 1934 he gave a lecture on the "National Socialist Criminal Law" and was there among other things. a. on “racial betrayal” and “life unworthy of life”. In this context he announced regarding the annihilation of life unworthy of life: "I believe that there are no objections to be raised against this either from the national or the medical point of view".

At the time of National Socialism , he was professor of forensic medicine at several universities. In 1934 he moved from Halle as a personal professor at the University of Göttingen , where he was dean of the medical faculty in 1935/36 . In 1937 he was appointed to the chair of forensic medicine at the University of Heidelberg , moved from there to the University of Königsberg in 1941 and, in the final phase of the Second World War, to Breslau (from September 1944 as an advisory forensic physician in the rank of senior field doctor and nominally from January 1945 as a full professor and Director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine there).

post war period

After the end of the war, Mueller was interned by the United States and after his release from 1946 he worked as a taxidermist at the municipal hospitals in Bremen. After denazification he took over in early December 1948, first as Chair of Representatives, from 1949 as an associate professor and from 1961 as professor of the Department of Forensic Medicine at the University of Heidelberg, where he arrived March 31, 1966 emeritus was, and until October 31, 1968 more provisionally headed the institute and represented the chair.

Mueller's main research areas were forensic medicine as well as medical law and class. He published on injuries, blood typing and abortion in particular . His work forensic medicine , published in 1953 and revised and expanded in 1975, is considered a relevant standard work. Despite his Nazi burden, Friedrich Herber calls him “one of the most important forensic doctors of the second third of the 20th century”.

Honors and offices

In 1939 Mueller was elected a member of the Forensic Medicine section of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . Mueller was from November 1935 to the end of September 1937 chairman of the German Society for Forensic Medicine and Criminology and again from the beginning of August 1940 to the end of September 1942 as the successor to Gerhard Buhtz . Even after the end of the Second World War , he temporarily took over the chairmanship of the German Society for Forensic and Social Medicine. He was an honorary member of several forensic medicine societies, for example in Germany, Finland, Japan, Spain and France. Mueller was also President of the German Society for Trauma, Insurance, Supply and Traffic Medicine . From 1950 he was editor of the German magazine for all forensic medicine .

Fonts (selection)

  • Investigations into the inheritance of fingerprint patterns with special consideration of legal issues , Borntraeger, Berlin 1930. From: Zeitschrift f. inductive descent u. Heredity. Vol. 56, H. ¾ (also med. Habilitation thesis at the University of Frankfurt am Main)
  • Technology and importance of blood group testing for forensic medicine : Lecture, go to d. State Med. Akad. Munich, JA Barth, Leipzig 1934. Overall title: Staatsmedizinische Abhandlungen 4.
  • Forensic and social medicine including medical law: a textbook for students and doctors , JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich / Berlin 1938 (together with Kurt Walcher)
  • Forensic Medicine: Ext. Illustrated , Springer, Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg, 1953.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. The year of birth 1894 given only by Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, on p. 419 is wrong.
  2. Who is who? , Volume 15, Arani, 1967, p. 1331.
  3. ^ Entry on Berthold Mueller in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis
  4. ^ Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Militzke, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-86189-249-9 , p. 165.
  5. Quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 419.
  6. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 419.
  7. Albrecht Scholz, Thomas Barth, Anna-Sophia Pappai and Axel Wacker: The fate of the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty in Breslau after the expulsion in 1945/46. In: Würzburger medical history reports 24, 2005, pp. 497-533, here: p. 527.
  8. ^ A b Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Militzke, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-86189-249-9 , p. 166.
  9. Albrecht Scholz, Thomas Barth, Anna-Sophia Pappai and Axel Wacker: The fate of the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty in Breslau after the expulsion in 1945/46. In: Würzburger medical history reports 24, 2005, pp. 497-533, here: pp. 514 and 527.
  10. ^ A b Rudolf Vierhaus (Ed.): German Biographical Encyclopedia , Volume Menghin - Pötel, 2nd edition, KG Saur Verlag GmbH & Company, p. 241.
  11. ^ Member entry of Berthold Mueller at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on August 6, 2013.
  12. ^ Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Militzke, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-86189-249-9 , pp. 164-165.