Carl Schneider (doctor)

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Carl Schneider (born December 19, 1891 in Gembitz in the Mogilno district , Posen ; † December 11, 1946 due to suicide in custody in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German psychiatrist and university professor . Schneider became known for his involvement in killing the mentally ill during the Nazi era .

Career

Carl Schneider was the only child of a former pastor who ran a small private school and left the family before his son started school to go to the United States as a traveling musician . This forced the mother to move to live with relatives in Pegau near Leipzig . Here Schneider performed so well that he was able to attend the Saxon Princely School Grimma as a scholarship holder , where he graduated from high school in 1911 . After his military service in Würzburg , he began his medical studies there in 1912 , which he was able to complete in 1919 despite his work as a field doctor in the First World War.

Schneider then worked as an assistant at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Leipzig under Paul Flechsig until 1922 , where he also married in 1920, before he accepted a civil service position as a government medical adviser at the Saxon sanatorium and nursing home in Arnsdorf / Saxony in 1922 near Dresden . The position left him time for a rich scientific work that deepened the psychological analysis of mental disorders, which was inspired by the Berlin psychiatrist Arthur Kronfeld , whose publication series Kleine Schriften zur Seelenforschung Schneider continued for a short time in 1928. In 1926 he was given a research stay at the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich.

With Hermann Paul Nitsche , who later headed Aktion T4 , he helped design the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1930 , for which social hygiene concepts were formulated for the first time, which the National Socialists then put into practice. In the same year he successfully applied for the position of senior physician at the Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel in Bielefeld . Here he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1932 (membership number 1.112.586).

Activity during the time of National Socialism

Head of the Heidelberg Clinic

After the Nazis' seizure of power "Schneider received in October 1933 as a successor to the sacked by the Nazis Karl Wilmanns the Department of Psychiatry of the University in Heidelberg . Here at the Psychiatric University Clinic , which he was to head until 1945, he placed a focus on “ work therapy ”, which for him was not only “the 'basis' of all therapeutic activities in psychiatry”, but also a political program. Since, according to Schneider's understanding, humans were initially a community being and mental illness meant falling out of community conditions, occupational therapy was about returning the sick to a task in the community, namely work. In this way, occupational therapy also served to assess the patient's social usefulness.

The other focus of the Heidelberg clinic under Schneider was hereditary biology. In this context, Schneider argued with the "reproductive value" of the individual. Since the patient is incapable of lively activity in the community, the state has the right to demand "that only people who are capable of this lively community grow back." Schneider expressly welcomed the " Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Offspring " on forced sterilization . In the Heidelberg clinic, an as yet unrecognized number of applications for the forced sterilization of patients at the clinic was made, while Schneider and his employees prepared several hundred reports on forced sterilization procedures. In his writings, Schneider tried to combine the occupational therapeutic and hereditary biological evaluation of humans in the concept of (schizophrenic) symptom associations or functional associations.

Political offices

As a NSDAP member, who had already joined the party before the "seizure of power", Schneider took on various offices in the Baden NSDAP during the Nazi dictatorship. From 1937 to 1940 he was Gauamtsleiter of the Race Political Office of the NSDAP in Gau Baden . In 1937 and 1938 he also worked as the acting Gaudozentenbundführer von Baden for the National Socialist German Lecturer Association .

Involvement in the "euthanasia" murders during the Nazi era

During World War II , Schneider became a psychiatrist in the 6th Army . Since April 20, 1940 he worked as a T4 expert . Not only did he decide on the life and death of prison inmates based on the files, but as a member of a medical commission in 1941 he also selected patients for killing in the von Bodelschwingh institutions in Bethel near Bielefeld. He was involved in the deliberations on the draft law on euthanasia. He was also called in to the discussions for the planning of the filmic propaganda , with which the murder of the mentally incurable ill should be brought closer to the population and conveyed as positive. He rated the film “ Dasein ohne Leben ” positively, although it was never officially shown.

In December 1942, Schneider set up his own research department in the Wiesloch sanatorium to allow mentally handicapped and epilepsy patients to be examined in detail before they were killed in the Eichberg institution . Due to the war, this department had to stop its work at the end of March 1943. Since the summer of 1943, 52 “idiotic” children have been examined in the Heidelberg clinic, of which 21 were subsequently killed in the Eichberg asylum in order to examine their brains. Since 1998 a memorial in front of the Heidelberg Psychiatric University Clinic has been commemorating the “research children”.

After the end of the war

At the end of the war, Schneider fled Heidelberg on March 29, 1945, was later arrested and interned in a camp in Moosburg . On November 29, 1946, Schneider was transferred to the German judiciary in Frankfurt am Main to testify in the proceedings against Werner Heyde . Clarified by the responsible public prosecutor about the hopelessness of his own position in the event of an indictment, Carl Schneider hanged himself on December 11, 1946 in his prison cell. His employees were not prosecuted and were able to continue working and practicing after the war. His membership in the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences was canceled after the war.

Today Carl Schneider is regarded as one of the key figures in Nazi medical crimes, but at the same time as an original researcher in the fields of schizophrenia , epilepsy and dementia and as the author of the best schizophrenia therapy book of the time.

Works

  • Psychology and psychiatry. In: Arch.Psychiat.Nervenkr. 78, 1926, pp. 522-571.
  • The psychology of schizophrenics and its significance for the clinic of schizophrenia. Thieme, Leipzig 1930.
  • Treatment and prevention of the insane. Springer, Berlin 1939.
  • The schizophrenic symptom associations. Springer, Berlin 1942.

See also

literature

  • Petra Becker-von Rose, Sophinette Becker , Bernd Laufs: Insights into medicine during National Socialism. Examples from Heidelberg University. In: Karin Buselmeier among others: Also a history of the University of Heidelberg. Edition Quadrat, Mannheim 1985, ISBN 3-923003-29-3 , pp. 315–336.
  • Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 152.
  • Bernd Laufs: Psychiatry at the time of National Socialism using the example of the Heidelberg University Clinic. Dissertation: Saarland University 1992.
  • Maike Rotzoll, Gerrit Hohendorf: The Psychiatric-Neurological Clinic. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart , Volker Sellin , Eike Wolgast (Eds.): The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism. Springer, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-540-21442-9 , pp. 909-939.
  • Christine Teller: Carl Schneider. On the biography of a German scientist. In: History and Society. 16, 1990, ISSN  0340-613X , pp. 464-478.
  • Maike Rotzoll, Volker Roelcke , Gerrit Hohendorf: Carl Schneider's "Research Department" at the Heidelberg Psychiatric University Clinic 1943/44. In: Heidelberg. Yearbook on the history of the city 16. 2012, ISBN 978-3-924566-39-5 , pp. 113–122.
  • Götz Aly : The burdened. "Euthanasia" 1939–1945. A history of society . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-000429-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maike Rotzoll, Gerrit Hohendorf: The Psychiatric-Neurological Clinic. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart, Volker Sellin, Eike Wolgast (Eds.): The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism . Berlin 2006, pp. 914-924.
  2. ↑ Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon for National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , p. 152.
  3. ↑ M. Rotzoll, G. Hohendorf: The Psychiatric-Neurological Clinic. 2006, pp. 927-932.
  4. ^ Franz Peschke: The Heidelberg-Wiesloch research department Carl Schneider in the Second World War. In: Series of publications by the working group "The Wiesloch sanatorium and nursing home in the time of National Socialism". Issue 2 ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 2.54 MB), Wiesloch 1993, pp. 42–77. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pzn-wiesloch.de
  5. ↑ M. Rotzoll, G. Hohendorf: The Psychiatric-Neurological Clinic. 2006.
  6. ^ Peter Sandner: Administration of the murder of the sick. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen 2003, ISBN 3-89806-320-8 , pp. 932-934, p. 741.
  7. ↑ Carl Schneider. In: Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed on June 11, 2016 .
  8. ^ Klaus Dörner: Carl Schneider: Ingenious therapist, modern ecological systems theorist and euthanasia murderer. On Carl Schneider's "Treatment and Prevention of Mental Illnesses", Berlin 1939. In: Psychiatrische Praxis. 13, 1986, pp. 112-114.
personal data
SURNAME Schneider, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH December 19, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Gembitz
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1946
Place of death Frankfurt am Main