Ernst Klebelsberg

Ernst Klebelsberg , born as Ernst von Klebelsberg (born June 25, 1883 in Hall in Tirol ; † May 13, 1957 ibid) was an Austrian psychiatrist. From 1925 to 1950 he was medical director of the psychiatric sanatorium and nursing home in Hall.

Life

The von Klebelsberg family came from South Tyrol ; his father was a city pharmacist and later mayor of Hall in Tirol. In 1902 Klebelsberg graduated from high school in Hall with distinction. Graduated from the University of Innsbruck with a degree in medicine . From 1910, Klebelsberg was employed by Josef Offer at the "Landesheilanstalt" and in 1925 took over the management of the institution. The introduction of the malaria and insulin cure or electric shock therapy is partly attributed to his initiative. The assumption that the mentally ill could be cured by artificially induced fever attacks by means of a malaria infection was tested on people in the Dachau concentration camp ; instead of healing, deaths resulted.

Entanglements in the time of National Socialism

During the Nazi era , Klebelsberg continued to be the medical director of the Hall Institute. In 1940 the euthanasia doctor Friedrich Mennecke personally viewed the Haller medical histories, whereupon a representative of the " Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft ", the deputy head of the Nazi killing center Hartheim , Georg Renno , appeared in SS uniform to deport all those patients who were on a list were summarized. When in December 1940 patients were to be transported from the institution for the first time in the course of the Nazi euthanasia , Klebelsberg protested together with the board member of the Innsbruck Psychiatric Clinic, Helmut Scharfetter, to Hans Czermak , the head of Department III (People's Care) of the Reichsstatthalterei Tirol-Vorarlberg . According to Klebelsberg's assessment, many of the "requested" patients were not terminally ill or were needed by the institution because of their work performance. Thereupon he was allowed by the Gauleiter Franz Hofer to remove curable and able-bodied patients from the lists. More than 100 people thus escaped certain death. However, in December 1940 the omnibuses of the charitable health transport company (Gekrat) drove up to the nursing home and sanatorium in Hall to pick up 179 inmates. The same thing was repeated in March 1941, when another 49 people were deported from the Hall nursing home. Two months later another 28 patients were abducted. The destination was the Niederhart sanatorium in Upper Danube, the transit station to Hartheim Castle near Linz , where they were murdered within a few weeks. After Czermak's conversation with Hofer, Klebelsberg was able to “screen those to be removed” with “his common sense” to save human lives. In the trial against Czermak he presented this as follows:

“We agreed that the healthy workers should be canceled and I made use of that too. All those who were reasonably useful for us, or people who were temporarily in the institution, should be deleted. We all thought to ourselves that if we were too generous with the deletion, we would just offend and then the whole institution would be cleared out. That was my belief. The defendant gave me a general power of attorney and then did not take any more detailed care. "

- Statement by Franz Klebelsberg

Klebelsberg also took part in the organization of the transport of patients from the supply houses Nassereith, Imst and Ried as well as from the St. Josef Institute Mils.

In his first testimony in May 1946, Klebelsberg stated that he had believed what was in store for the deported; in later statements he did not want to have known about it. Despite his allegedly negative attitude towards " euthanasia ", resignation was out of the question for him, as he explained after the end of the war. He believed that he could prevent worse by staying. Not only who was saved, but also who was destroyed, depended on his opinion.

In a criminal trial after the end of the war, Hans Czermak was sentenced to eight years in prison as the person primarily responsible for the organization and implementation of the “euthanasia” transports in Tyrol and Vorarlberg . As the main witness, Klebelsberg testified that no criminal proceedings had been initiated against him.

Life after 1945

Klebelsberg retired in 1950 after 40 years of service. Klebelsberg was appointed court councilor.

literature

• Obituary for Dr. Ernst Klebelsberg. Tiroler Tageszeitung from May 16, 1957, p. 4.

Web links

• Dr. Ernst Klebelsberg
• Veronika Pöll: Nazi euthanasia in Tyrol . Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ernst Klee : Auschwitz, the Nazi medicine and its victims , Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2002, p. 113 ff.
2. ↑ Quoted in: Horst Schreiber: An “idealist, but not a fanatic”? Dr. Hans Czermak and the Nazi euthanasia in Tyrol. The career of Dr. Hans Czermak . In: Tiroler Heimat , Volume 72 (2008), pp. 205–224.