Carl Joseph Gauss

This article deals with the physician Carl Joseph Gauß . On the artillery officer, geodesist and construction officer Carl Joseph Gauß see Joseph Gauß .

Carl Joseph Gauß (born October 29, 1875 on the Lohne estate near Isernhagen , Hanover (state and province) ; † February 11, 1957 in Bad Kissingen , Lower Franconia ) was a German gynecologist , obstetrician and university teacher .

Origin and studies

Carl Joseph Gauß was the son of the farmer Carl August Gauß (1849–1927), from 1874 to 1883 landlord on Lohne, and Anna Ebmeier (1850–1900). His great-grandfather was the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauß (1777–1855).

Gauß studied medicine in Tübingen , Erlangen , Kiel , Würzburg and finally in Munich , where he received his doctorate in 1898 and passed his state examination in 1899. Since 1895 he was a member of the Corps Saxonia Kiel .

After completing his military service, Gauss was a ship's doctor on a steamship belonging to the North German Lloyd in his early professional years .

In Freiburg , Göttingen and Berlin he acquired his qualification as a gynecologist and specialist in obstetrics. In 1909 Gauß completed his habilitation in Freiburg, where he was also appointed associate professor in 1912.

During the First World War he was deployed on the western front and was awarded the Iron Cross II. Class and the " Order of the Zähringer Lion ".

On February 6, 1919 married Gauss in Dusseldorf Emilie Auguste Magdalene dog's mercury (born January 24, 1886 in Castrop-Rauxel ), the daughter of Rudolph dog's mercury and Mathilde Hohendahl. His wife brought a son and a daughter into the only civil marriage. The marriage remained childless.

Professor in Freiburg and Würzburg

In 1921 Gauß was appointed head of the gynecological department of the Deaconess Hospital in Freiburg. Until 1922 Gauß was a professor at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . In 1923 he accepted an appointment as full professor of gynecology and obstetrics at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg and took over as director of the women's clinic and midwifery school there.

Gauß earned services above all for the introduction of twilight sleep in obstetrics and in the development of the Dräger narcylene anesthesia machine in 1925 together with the Heidelberg pharmacologist Hermann Wieland (1885–1929). The abnormally strong mobility of the uterus in the isthmus ( inner cervix ) was named after him as a sign of pregnancy.

Together with Hermann Wieland, the anesthesia specialist Ernst von der Porten and Behrend Behrens , he was co-editor in charge of the specialist journal “ The Pain” from 1928 , for which all of them were awarded the "Scroll of Recognition" in 1928 by the American Anesthesia Society. The pain appeared until 1942, was published in the Würzburg University printing house Stürtz and was the first German-language anesthesiological journal.

The German Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology made Gauß an honorary member. He was honorary president of the Paracelsus Society.

Already at the beginning of his professional career in Freiburg, Gauß devoted himself primarily to radiation medicine . He used radiation therapy to treat malignant and benign tumors .

A scientific treatise on "radiation menolysis in the sterility of women" , which appeared in 1935 in the Munich Medical Weekly (Issue 13, page 488 ff.), Unintentionally led Gauß into the discussion about the increasingly concretely developing racial ideas of the National Socialist rulers.

Gauß's doctoral students included the work presented in 1936 on investigations into the race pool on 450 women at the Würzburg University Women's Clinic Kurt Brost, an employee of the race hygienist Ludwig Schmidt .

In the time of National Socialism

The Gauss, who called himself “ believers in God ” and remained in the Protestant Church until the death of his parents, shared a patriotic and national-conservative sentiment with the majority of his generation and his class. So he confessed to the DNVP program , which he voted in the Reichstag election on November 6, 1932 , but was not a member. Gauss was a member of the “ Volksbund für das Deutschtum abroad” , later the “ Reichskolonialbund ” and the “ Academy for Scientific Research and Maintenance of Germanness ” in Munich. Shortly after the National Socialists came to power, he joined the NSDAP on April 23, 1933 as a “ March fallen ” . Membership in other party organizations such as the NSKK , NSFK , NSV , NS-Ärztebund , NS-Lehrerbund , NS-Altherrenbund and NS-Reichskriegerbund followed.

New building of the university gynecological clinic in Würzburg

During his time as clinic director, after years of cramped accommodation at Würzburger Klinikstrasse 6, he promoted the new building of the university gynecological clinic in the years 1932 to 1934 immediately adjacent to the Luitpold hospital in the Grombühl district. To enforce the new building, he also had his students demonstrate. Gauß dealt intensively with the planning drawn up by Senior Government Building Officer August Lommel from the University Building Authority, not only with the medical technology, but also the artistic equipment of the new building designed for 280 patients. The facility, described in the press as the “most modern women's clinic in Germany” , was provided with art in the building and / or artistic furnishings that were largely determined by Gauss. Paintings by local artists were installed in the hospital rooms, and the stairwells and hallways were decorated with frescoes and sculptures. Gauß donated the sculpture by Nobel Prize winner Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen himself. The overall artistic program of building design and furnishings corresponded discreetly but clearly to the new zeitgeist in terms of form and presentation. Gauss certainly did his best to promote this orientation according to the new regime's understanding of art. The names of the sickrooms with the names of German cities that were taken from the Reich after the end of World War I have just as much political significance as the bust of Hitler erected in the entrance area at the instigation of Gauss (in the first three days after the inauguration of the new building of the In the women's clinic, every newborn baby born there received a bronze bust of Hitler).

Involvement in Nazi racial politics

The racial and hygienic measures of the Nazi state aimed at promoting the largest possible “racially high quality” offspring. Marital loans , improvement of health and hygienic conditions, social upgrading of motherhood , especially of mothers with many children, served positively . On the negative side, “inferior offspring” should be prevented or eliminated. A first step was the " Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring " July 14, 1933 is, according to the people with certain genetic disorders and against their will sterilized could be. In the case of affected women, abortion was also declared permissible up to the 6th month a year later .

The responsible hereditary health courts based their decision primarily on the reports of the racial political offices of the NSDAP . Chief of the Race Policy Office in Würzburg from October 1934 to May 1936 and Observers in the Hereditary Health Court Würzburg was Werner Heyde , in 1939, the first medical director of the Nazi murder Disabled program Aktion T4 .

The compulsory sterilizations ordered were carried out in the catchment area of ​​Würzburg at the university gynecological clinic there, managed by Gauß. On July 14, 1934, a young woman diagnosed with schizophrenia was forcibly sterilized for the first time . Up to 1945 there had been a total of 994 so-called “official sterilizations”, as the forced sterilizations were officially called, on girls and women between the ages of 13 and 47 years. There were four deaths in 1935/36.

Due to the order of the Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti of March 11, 1943, Eastern workers could apply for an abortion “at their own request”. However, the situation of forced laborers in Germany, especially women from the eastern occupation areas, precluded a voluntary decision in most cases. For example, 148 abortions were carried out at the Würzburg Women's Clinic in the 3rd to 7th month of pregnancy between 1943 and 1945. The interventions were usually carried out as caesarean sections and the women were sterilized using a method developed by Gauss for women who had recently given birth.

Gauss already used Hitler's first visit to Würzburg on August 5, 1930 to present his designs for eugenic sterilization using radiation in the SA's “Brown House” . The publication of his above-mentioned treatise on the use of radiation menolysis in 1935, however, provoked a conflict with the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, the Reich Health Office and two authors of the official commentary on the Sterilization Act, Arthur Gütt and Ernst Rüdin . Displeasure caused there the alleged dramatization of the death rate with surgical sterilization, which Gauss cited as a disadvantage of this method compared to his radiation treatment. In a disciplinary procedure initiated by the University of Würzburg at the request of the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture, Gauss referred not only to his encounter with Hitler in this regard in 1930, but also to his fight for eugenic sterilization since 1925 and his pioneering work in this area down. The case was finally closed; the hasty action of Gauss when publishing his article, however, "emphatically" criticized it as being detrimental to the acceptance of the sterilization legislation.

By 1943 Gauss published a total of 13 papers on the topic of sterilization.

Second World War

During the Second World War , Gauss was also used for military service through two deployments in the Würzburg medical department. For his services he was awarded the War Merit Cross 2nd Class .

Part of the university women's clinic was also destroyed in the bombing raid on Würzburg on March 16, 1945 . The director's house, which Gauß had lived in since 1934 and attached to the women's clinic, was badly damaged; the entire establishment fell into flames.

After the war

After the director's house had been destroyed, Gauss found a temporary apartment in Zinklesweg near the clinic, before he was deposed by the American military authorities on July 31, 1945, left Würzburg and moved to Bad Kissingen.

As part of the denazification , Gauss was classified by the Bad Kissingen Chamber of Justice on October 30, 1946 as a so-called “fellow traveler” and sentenced to a fine of RM 2,000 and the assumption of legal costs of RM 7,500.

After Gauß's discharge, the gynecological clinic was initially headed provisionally from August 1945 by W. Gförer, a gynecologist practicing in Würzburg, and from August 1946 by Fritz Peil. In November 1946, gynecologist and obstetrician Karl Burger (1893–1962) became Gauss's successor as chair holder.

His retirement by the University of Würzburg took place on October 25, 1947. He did not retire properly until 1950 as part of a nationwide amnesty, after the Bavarian Minister of Education, Alois Hundhammer , repeatedly refused to claim that Gauß had openly represented National Socialist ideas before he came to power had to pronounce the requested retirement.

From February 1, 1947 Gauß worked in Bad Kissingen as a gynecologist with his own practice. Later he took over the management of the gynecological department of the Elisabethenkrankenhaus there. He held this until his 80th birthday.

Carl Joseph Gauß died on February 11, 1957 in Bad Kissingen at the age of 82.

Gauss's reputation as a dedicated clinician who has made merits in the fields of obstetrics, radiation therapy, and the development of anesthetic methods to relieve pain in labor lives on. In 1958, his successor as head of the Würzburg University Women's Clinic ensured that a bust of Gauß, commissioned by the Franconian artist Fried Heuler in 1944, was completed and placed in the stairwell of the women's clinic.

literature

• Gauß, Carl, Joseph in Reichs Handbuch der Deutschen Gesellschaft - The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. First volume, p. 522, Deutscher Wirtschaftsverlag, Berlin 1930.
• Liselotte Buchheim:  Gauss, Carl Joseph. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 107 f. ( Digitized version ).
• G. Matthaes: In memoriam Carl Joseph Gauss. In: Medical Research. Journal about the research results of the whole medicine. Edmund Banaschewski , Bad Wörishofen 1957.
• Hoplitschek, Kriemhild and Claus Goecke: University Women's Clinic Würzburg. On the history of the clinic and its directors. Wuerzburg 1973.
• 200 years of the University Women's Clinic and Midwifery School in Würzburg. University Women's Clinic, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-00-017157-6 .
• Jan-Philipp Dietl: The Würzburg University Women's Clinic and its director in the Third Reich. Thesis History Röntgen-Gymnasium, Würzburg 2000.
• H. Domaniecki: The directors of the Würzburg University Women's Clinic - their life and work. Dissertation, Würzburg 1936.

Web links

• Literature by and about Carl Joseph Gauß in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library
• Colorado College: Ancestral List of the Gauss Family ( Memento of May 28, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1960, 77 , 117
2. ↑ Carl Joseph Gauß, H. Wieland, E. vd Porten: The pain. Volume 1, Würzburg 1928.
3. ^ Herbert Baar: On the development of anesthesiology at the University of Würzburg. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 951–956; here: p. 953 f.
4. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995 (= Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3; also dissertation Würzburg 1995), ISBN 3-88479-932-0 , p. 67.
5. ↑ Carl Joseph Gauß: From Freihaus to the women's clinic. A short outline of the history of the Würzburg women's clinic and midwifery school. In: Max Buchner (Ed.): From the past of the University of Würzburg. Festschrift for the 350th anniversary of the University of Würzburg. Berlin 1932, pp. 239-254.
6. ^ Richard Kraemer: Würzburg physicians 50 years ago. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 165-172, here: p. 167.
7. ↑ Peter Weidisch: Würzburg in the "Third Reich". In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 196-289 and 1271-1290; here: p. 249.
8. ↑ Horst Kremling : Prof. Dr. Karl Burger: Director of the University Women's Clinic in Würzburg from 1946 to 1958. In: Würzburger medical-historical reports 17, 1998, p. 549 f.