Erich Zurhelle

Erich Zurhelle (born April 6, 1881 in Aachen ; † October 15, 1952 there ) was a German gynecologist and medical director at the Luisenhospital Aachen .

Live and act

Zurhelle was the son of the medical councilor Julius Emil Zurhelle (1841-1912) and his second wife Johanna Alwine Zillessen (1850-1886). After graduating from the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in 1889, Zurhelle studied medicine at the University of Bonn . He completed his studies in 1904 with the state examination and did his doctorate on the development of diaphragmatic hernias. After a short time as a trainee doctor in Marburg , he returned to Bonn, where he was taken on as first assistant under Heinrich Fritsch at the gynecological clinic of the university hospital from 1906 . A year later he was first appointed as a private lecturer in obstetrics and gynecology and from 1913 as adjunct professor . In the same year Zurhelle returned to his hometown Aachen, where he worked as a gynecologist in the former Forster Hospital and, from 1916, also took on part-time tasks as a city councilor for Aachen.

At the beginning of the First World War , Zurhelle was one of the signatories of the declaration of the university professors of the German Reich in October 1914 , which justified this war as a defensive struggle for German culture. In 1920 Zurhelle was appointed to the Luisenhospital in Aachen, where he became co-founder and managing director of the new obstetric and gynecological department, where he practiced until his death in 1952.

During the National Socialist era , Zurhelle became a member of the National Socialist People's Welfare , the National Socialist Medical Association , the Reich Air Protection Association and the SA reserve, and from 1937 the NSDAP . His membership in the SA reserve, in which he was later promoted to Sanitätssturmführer, was established through its incorporation into the Stahlhelm organization , the Bund der Frontsoldaten , which he had joined a few years earlier in the hope of preventing entry into other Nazi organizations to be able to. He also tried to prevent his membership in the NSDAP by joining the Rotary Club -Aachen, as its members were denied entry into the NSDAP. After the dissolution of the Rotary clubs in 1937, however, this hindrance was removed and Zurhelle was forced to join the NSDAP.

In addition to the surgeons Eduard Borchers and Leo Funken , Zurhelle was one of the doctors at the Luisenkrankenhaus who were authorized to carry out forced sterilization under the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring . In this context, however, he refused the request to carry out abortions in "Eastern workers".

During the Second World War , Zurhelle was appointed ordinating doctor in Reserve Hospital IV in Aachen- Burtscheid and from 1943 to 1944 he was also active as a part-time director of the “Counseling Center for Childlessness in Marriage”. Shortly before the end of the war, he was temporarily imprisoned and, by order of the military government, was forced to suspend his hospital service and to go through a denazification process. After appropriate hearings and interrogations of witnesses, but also due to the fact that Zurhelle was apparently the only operative gynecologist in Aachen at the time, he was classified in Category IV, Follower , without property freeze on September 1, 1946 and was able to work in Resume hospital.

Grave stele of the Zurhelle family

Zurhelle belonged to several organizations in the social life of Aachen: he was a member of the Rotary Club Aachen and its president from 1936 to 1937. In addition, he was a member and for several years president of the recreation society Aachen as well as an honorary member in the association of bathing doctors and since 1919 a member of the Club Aachener Casino .

Erich Zurhelle was married to Ria Herbst (1891–1953), daughter of the machine manufacturer Gerhard Herbst from Krefeld ; the marriage remained childless. Zurhelle found his final resting place in the family crypt on the hot mountain cemetery in Burtscheid / Aachen . The photographer Martha Rosenfeld created a portrait of Erich Zurhelle, which was exhibited in the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in 1927, along with 60 other photos of well-known Aachen personalities .

Fonts (selection)

• A contribution to the theory of the development of diaphragmatic hernias , dissertation Bonn 1904
• A sure case of vaccine carcinoma , in: Archiv für Gynäkologie No. 81, 1907, pp. 353-369
• On the statistics of uterine cancer , in: Archive for Gynecology and Obstetrics No. 83, 1907, pp. 246-256
• Thromboses and embolisms after gynecological operations , in: Archive for Gynecology and Obstetrics No. 84, 1908, pp. 443-512
• The X-ray diagnosis of extrauterine pregnancy in later months with dead fruit , in: Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie No. 36, 1912, pp. 1177ff.
• Aachen as a bathing city , in: Rheinischer Beobachter No. 7, Potsdam 1928, p. 106ff.
• Early detection of female genital carcinoma , in: Allgemeine Medizin Zentralzeitung No. 98, 1931, p. 217ff.

literature

• Richard Kühl: Leading clinic doctors in Aachen and their role in the Third Reich, study by the Aachen Competence Center for the History of Science , Volume 11, Ed .: Dominik Groß, Diss. RWTH Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-014-0 pdf
• Carola Döbber: Political chief physicians? New studies on the Aachen medical profession in the 20th century . Study by the Aachen Competence Center for the History of Science, Volume 14, Ed .: Dominik Groß, Diss. RWTH Aachen 2012, pp. 46–53, ISBN 978-3-86219-338-7 pdf
• Wilhelm Leopold Janssen , Eduard Arens: History of the Club Aachener Casino. Aachen 1937 (2nd edition, edited by Elisabeth Janssen and Felix Kuetgens , 1964), p. 226, no.871

Individual evidence

1. ^ Declaration by Erich Zurhelle of December 18, 1945 in his denazification file