Erich Wagner (physician)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Erich Wagner (born September 15, 1912 in Komotau , † March 22, 1959 in Oberkirch ) was a German-Austrian SS-Sturmbannführer (1944) and camp doctor in Buchenwald concentration camp .

Life

After completing his school career, Wagner studied medicine at the University of Graz and Innsbruck, among others, and graduated in December 1938 with the state examination. Before Austria was annexed to the German Reich in March 1938, he was involved in the NSDAP and SS, which were banned in Austria . He then attended an SS junker school and received his license to practice medicine . In November 1939, Wagner was assigned to the Buchenwald concentration camp as a camp doctor, where he worked until January 1941.

In June 1940 his dissertation project A Contribution to the Tattoo Question was accepted by Friedrich Timm , director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine and Scientific Criminology at the University of Jena since 1938 . As early as the end of November 1940, Wagner submitted the dissertation that was later rated “very good”. Wagner was promoted to Dr. med. PhD . For this study, 800 tattooed beech forest prisoners were examined according to reasons for imprisonment, origin, motivation for tattooing and type of tattoo. In particular, connections between “tattooing and crime” should be explored. The work was probably mainly written by the Buchenwald prisoner Paul Grünewald and only accompanied by Wagner. However, the University of Jena was not aware of this.

"From the autumn of 1940 onwards, SS-Hauptsturmführer Müller worked in pathology, [...] Müller and the camp doctor Dr. Wagner, who was writing a doctoral thesis on tattoos. Both of them searched the whole camp for tattooed people and had them photographed. The prisoners were then called to the gate by Commandant Koch, selected for the splendor of their tattooed skin and sent to the [sick] ward. Soon afterwards the best skin specimens appeared in the 'Department of Pathology', where they were prepared and shown to SS visitors for years as special treasures. "

- Eugen Kogon : The SS state

The prisoner Gustav Wegerer, a Viennese chemical engineer and Kapo in the pathological department of the Buchenwald concentration camp, later testified as follows: “The SS doctor Dr. Wagner did a dissertation on tattoos, whereby it was noticeable that the prisoners he had appointed died and their tattoos were replaced. It can be assumed that he liquidated them in the hospital. ” Ilse Koch , wife of the camp commandant Karl Otto Koch , was probably inspired by this work to collect objects made of prepared skin.

After his assignment in Buchenwald, Wagner was probably used as a troop doctor in formations of the Waffen SS . At the end of the war, Wagner became an American prisoner of war, from which he was able to escape in 1948. He lived in Bavaria for six years under a pseudonym . From 1957 he practiced in his wife's doctor's practice in Lahr / Black Forest until he was arrested in 1958. Wagner was eventually because of its committed in Buchenwald crimes before the District Court of Offenburg charged and committed in March 1959 in detention in prison Oberkirch suicide .

literature

  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, ISBN 3-596-14906-1 .
  • Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition. Wallstein, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 3-89244-222-3 .
  • Christian Bode: On the history of forensic medicine at the University of Jena from 1901 to 1945 , dissertation from the Medical Faculty of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, July 2007 (pdf; 4.5 MB)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Christian Bode: On the history of forensic medicine at the University of Jena in the period from 1901 to 1945 , Jena 2007, p. 106f.
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 649
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , p. 236.
  4. ↑ Eugen Kogon: The SS State. The system of the German concentration camps , Kindler, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1974, p. 161f
  5. ↑ Gustav Wegerer's statement, quoted by: Ralf Bernd Herden: Doctorate on tattoos on tanned skin - Did the SS doctor Wagner have human skin tanned for his doctoral thesis? , April 2009
  6. ↑ Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945. Accompanying volume for the permanent historical exhibition. Göttingen 1999, p. 309
personal data
SURNAME Wagner, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Austrian camp doctor in Buchenwald concentration camp
DATE OF BIRTH September 15, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Komotau
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1959
Place of death Oberkirch (Baden)