Erich Häßler

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Fritz Otto Erich Häßler (born April 22, 1899 in Leipzig , † December 2, 2005 in Jena ) was a German pediatrician who was involved in child euthanasia during the Nazi era .

Life

He was the son of a Leipzig grocer who died early. In the First World War he served as a soldier from 1917 and achieved the rank of sergeant major , from 1919 to 1920 Häßler was involved in the Leipzig Freikorps . During his studies in 1918 he became a member of the St. Pauli Jena choir .

From 1923 he was initially a medical intern at the Leipzig Children's Clinic, and from 1925 he was also an assistant at the children's sanatorium in Dresden. In January 1927 he returned to Leipzig and worked there a. a. on the infection ward. As a physician in charge, he experienced the poliomyelitis epidemic that was rampant at the time . In 1932, Häßler was promoted to head of the polyclinic and a year later temporarily to the provisional head of the children's clinic. According to Häßler, his predecessor Siegfried Rosenbaum wanted to be released from the management of the clinic in order to be able to continue his scientific work. The request was granted. This process took place in 1932. He had to resign because of his Jewish descent on instructions from the National Socialists. Häßler also temporarily took over the management of the clinic after Rosenbaum definitively resigned from management. A short time later Werner Catel took over from him in this position, Häßler then became senior physician and Catel's deputy.

With the National Socialist " seizure of power " in 1933, Häßler joined the SA , in which he rose to become the paramedic leader. In 1937 he became a member of the NSDAP . In addition, he became a clerk and training speaker in the Racial Politics Office in Leipzig and chairman of the Nazi lecturers' association . In a work published in 1939 The care of the healthy and sick child , to whose co-authors he was one, Jews are described as "rootless parasitism".

During the Nazi era, he worked as a senior physician at the Leipzig University Children's Clinic, one of the centers for child euthanasia . According to Götz Aly , Olaf Kappelt and Martin Kassler, he was involved in the euthanasia crimes, and according to his own testimony, he had been an accomplice since May 1939.

As a result of the heavy bombing of Leipzig in December 1943, Häßler set up an alternative point in Hochweitzschen , from which a children's hospital ultimately developed. After his immediate discharge by the Allies on November 5, 1945, he looked after it full-time, but after four years in 1949 he moved to the Chemnitz Children's Clinic.

On October 15, 1953, the Jena University Clinic appointed Häßler as director of the children's clinic and full professor. He succeeded the late Yusuf Ibrahim . In this function, he made outstanding contributions between 1956 and 1960 in building the new clinic building on Westbahnhofstrasse. On February 28, 1965, after 11½ years, he left the chair for reasons of age. He last received public attention in January 2004: Together with 21 other colleagues, he signed a declaration of solidarity for the former Jena doctor Rosemarie Albrecht . The Gera public prosecutor's office had charged her with participating in the euthanasia crimes. He always rejected allegations that he himself was involved in the National Socialist atrocities.

Häßler was married twice and had a total of nine children.

plant

As part of his research, Häßler dealt with infectious diseases , the development and diseases ( rheumatism ) of the child's skeleton and preventive health protection ( vaccinations ). The systematic treatment of scarlet fever with penicillin in the children's clinic, which he first used in 1949/1950, goes back to him .

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Meißner (Ed.): Alt-Herren-Directory of the German Singers. Leipzig 1934, p. 161.
  2. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 217.
  3. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : "Benefactor of Mankind" . In: The time . No. 6 , February 3, 2000.
  4. ↑ Götz Aly : Race and Class: Research on the German essence. S. Fischer, Frankfurt / M. 2003, ISBN 978-3-10-000419-2 , p. 97
  5. ↑ Götz Aly : Jena and his role models , Berliner Zeitung , July 28, 2003
  6. ^ Olaf Kappelt : Brown Book GDR - Nazis in the GDR. Berlin Historica, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-939929-12-3 , p. 45
  7. ↑ Martin Kassler: The repression of eugenic crimes: the case of Yusuf Ibrahim . In: Germany Archive . 33, No. 4, 2000, p. 533: “Ibrahim's successor at the University of Jena was the pediatrician Erich Häßler. He had participated in the »euthanasia« crimes in Leipzig under the direction of Wemer Catel, the protagonist of the child murder. "
  8. ↑ Sascha Topp: History as an argument in post-war medicine: Forms of visualization of National Socialist euthanasia between politicization and historiography. Zugl. revised and exp. Version of the Diss. Univ. Gießen 2011, V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2013, ISBN 978-3-8471-0127-7 , p. 276
  9. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945? S. Fischer Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 , p. 217 .
personal data
SURNAME Häßler, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Häßler, Fritz Otto Erich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pediatrician
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 2005
Place of death Jena