Carl Lautenschläger (physician)

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Lautenschläger during the Nuremberg Trials

Carl Ludwig Lautenschläger (born February 27, 1888 in Karlsruhe ; † December 6, 1962 there ) was a German chemist and physician.

biography

Lautenschläger's father was an architect , his mother the daughter of a Stuttgart publishing house. He left grammar school without a degree and began training as a pharmacist , which he completed in 1907 with the state pre-examination. In October 1908 he began to study pharmacy in Karlsruhe, where he passed the state examination with the distinction very good in 1910 . In order to be able to take up an assistant position at the then Karlsruhe professor for chemistry, Carl Engler , he had to catch up with the Abitur . In 1912 he passed the external examination, shortly thereafter the diploma examination in chemistry. He was treated with a the end of 1913 dissertation on the relationships between auto-oxidation and polymerization of various unsaturated hydrocarbons PhD .

He took part in the First World War as a war volunteer , but was dismissed as unfit for service in 1915. In the same year his older brother Erwin fell on the Western Front. With this he lost an important confidante who had worked in civil life as an assistant doctor at the University Hospital in Frankfurt am Main and who had encouraged close collaboration with his brother Carl for his research there with chemotherapeutic agents . He then began studying medicine in Heidelberg with Albrecht Kossel and in Würzburg in order to continue the research on his own. After further studies in Freiburg, he passed his medical state examination in Erlangen in 1919. In 1919 he passed the Dr. med. with summa cum laude .

In 1919 he was appointed to a professorship for pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Greifswald , where he did not feel comfortable. In October 1920, on the initiative of Adolf Haeuser, he became head of pharmaceutical research at the Hoechst paintworks in Höchst and at the same time honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt . Lautenschläger expanded biochemical and biological research in Höchst.

After the Farbwerke had merged with other companies to form IG Farbenindustrie in 1925 , Lautenschläger was appointed to the management board in 1931 and to the supervisory board of the Behringwerke in Marburg in 1934 . After the death of the Höchst plant manager Ludwig Hermann on May 31, 1938, the IG Central Committee named Lautenschläger as his successor. Shortly before, on April 29, 1938, he applied for membership in the NSDAP , which accepted him retrospectively from May 1, 1937.

During the Second World War, Lautenschläger was awarded the War Merit Cross, 1st Class, and in 1942 he became a military economist . In 1943, the Höchst plant supplied preparations for pharmaceutical experiments in the Buchenwald concentration camp , in which prisoners were deliberately infected with typhus . A large number of the test subjects died in these experiments. Lautenschläger had initially requested the clinical trials in order to be able to test two active ingredients developed in Höchst, but had the deliveries stopped after he was able to conclude from the reports that the trials violated laws and professional medical standards.

After the end of the war

Lautenschläger remained in office even after the Höchst plant was occupied by American troops on March 29, 1945. He considered himself unencumbered and took over the management of the denazification of the plant. By the end of June, he had 101 of the approximately 4,200 employees who had emerged as active National Socialists suspended.

On July 5, 1945, the American military government confiscated IG Farben's assets in the American zone of occupation . The basis was the General Order No. 2 to the Military Government Act No. 52. On July 7, 1945, Lautenschläger was dismissed by the military administration as works manager, later also other leading employees of Lautenschläger. While Karl Winnacker, who had been established as Lautenschläger's successor at an early stage, and the long-time chief engineer and deputy plant manager Friedrich Jähne later took on leading positions at the successor company, Farbwerke Hoechst , Lautenschläger never entered the plant again. Until his retirement in the early 1950s, he worked in a pharmaceutical laboratory at IG Farben in Elberfeld . He then returned to his hometown Karlsruhe, where he lived in seclusion and died on December 6, 1962.

In the literature, his personal guilt during the Nazi era is judged differently; in general, he is viewed as a fellow traveler who unreservedly submitted to the expectations and decisions of the National Socialist leadership. In contrast to other business leaders, Gauleiter Jakob Sprenger considered him to be ideologically stable and a staunch anti-Semite .

In the IG Farben trial , he initially worked with the prosecutors, but refused to make any statement during the trial. On July 30, 1948, the court acquitted him on all five counts for lack of evidence. On December 29, 1948, he was classified as a fellow traveler in the arbitration chamber proceedings , and after his objection on June 19, 1949, as exonerated . Lautenschläger saw himself as a victim and cheated of his life's work. In his memoirs, written in 1952, there are anti-Semitic remarks about the Nuremberg Trial and lewd passages in which he saw himself cheated of the fruits of his labor.

Employees and colleagues characterized him as a closed loner. Karl Winnacker described him in his memoirs as a type of scholar buried in his specialist knowledge who, as a plant manager, was too conflict-averse and insufficiently assertive and isolated on the board of IG Farben. Like his predecessor Ludwig Hermann , Lautenschläger was a devout Protestant who was influenced by his mother's pietistic background . He used to spend his vacation with his mother in a rest home of the Inner Mission in Langensteinbach. In 1929, at the age of 41, he married a 23-year-old young lady from a good family whom he had met through his mother.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lautenschläger was a first-rate opportunist who had delivered his work and its employees to the Gauleitung and Gestapo - an example of spineless conformism. , in: Stephan Lindner, Hoechst. An IG Farben plant in the Third Reich , p. 356.
personal data
SURNAME Lautenschläger, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lautenschläger, Carl Ludwig (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemist and physician
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlsruhe
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1962
Place of death Karlsruhe