Ernst Illing

Letter from Ernst Illing to the parents of a toddler who was murdered in the children's department “Am Spiegelgrund”

Ernst Robert Gerhard Illing (* 6. April 1904 in Leipzig , † the 30th November 1946 in Vienna ) was a German psychiatrist and neurologist , and in the context of children's euthanasia to Nazi medical murders involved.

Life

Illing studied medicine and received his doctorate in 1929 at the University of Leipzig with the dissertation "About congenital word blindness" (congenital writing and reading difficulties) as a doctor of medicine . In May 1933 he joined the NSDAP . In the party he took over the office of block leader . After his specialist training as a neurologist , Illing worked at the St. Georg Municipal Hospital in Leipzig from 1933 and then at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Leipzig. In 1935 Illing moved to the Görden State Agency in Brandenburg an der Havel . There he became senior physician and deputy director under Hans Heinze at the end of 1938 . From 1938 he was also head of the district headquarters for propaganda in the racial office of the NSDAP . Illing gave a lecture on the prevention of hereditary offspring, called for healthy families with many children to be given preference and for so-called anti - social workers to be sent to labor camps.

After the beginning of the Second World War he was employed as a senior physician in the Air Force until October 1941 . From July 1, 1942 to April 1945, Illing worked at the Vienna city youth welfare institution " Am Spiegelgrund " as medical director. In this position he officially succeeded Erwin Jekelius , who was drafted into the Wehrmacht at the beginning of 1942 .

Illing, as head of the children's department at the Brandenburg-Görden asylum, was already involved in child euthanasia , and was also responsible for the children's department “Am Spiegelgrund”. During the Second World War , at least 789 disabled and / or behavioral children were killed in the Vienna children's department by administering sleeping pills, malnutrition or hypothermia. Also found TB -Versuchsreihen instead of vaccines in cooperation with the Vienna University Clinic. For the diagnosis of tuberculous sclerosis, medically unnecessary interventions were performed on children using encephalography.

After the end of the war, Illing was arrested and from July 15 to 18, 1946, along with the doctors Marianne Türk and Margarethe Hübsch, he was indicted in the first Steinhof trial before the Vienna People's Court . While Türk received a ten-year prison sentence and Hübsch was acquitted for lack of evidence, Illing received the death penalty . Illing had been convicted in about 200 cases for the administration of lethal drugs and lumbar punctures as well as the induction or administration of lethal drugs. The judgment was hanging in November 1946 enforced . Another doctor involved, Heinrich Gross , was sentenced to two years in prison in 1950 .

literature

• Rolf Castell: History of child and adolescent psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-52-546174-7 .
• Ernst Klee : The personal lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
• Ernst Klee: "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life" ; Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1983; ISBN 3-10-039303-1 .
• Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews . 12 edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
• Michael Hubenstorf: Continuity and Break in Medical History. Medicine in Austria 1938 to 1955 , in: Friedrich Stadler (Ed.): Continuity and break. 1938–1945–1955 Contributions to Austrian cultural and scientific history , LIT Verlag Berlin-Hamburg-Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7489-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 278.
2. ^ Rolf Castell: History of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961 , Göttingen 2003, p. 520
3. ↑ Ulrich Weinzierl: A terrible psychiatrist , in: Die Welt from November 14, 2005
4. ↑ Wolfgang Neugebauer: Viennese Psychiatry and Nazi Crimes , Presentation, Vienna 1997, (pdf; 44 kB)
5. ^ "Punishment of euthanasia crimes" in the document archive of the Austrian Resistance
6. ^ Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider: People's jurisdiction and denazification in Austria. In: Walter Schuster, Wolfgang Weber (ed.): Denazification in regional comparison: the attempt to take stock (= historical yearbook of the city of Linz 2002 ). Archive of the City of Linz , Linz 2004, ISBN 3-900388-55-5 .
7. ↑ Processing of the events - child murder on Spiegelgrund ( memento of the original from March 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.