Ernst Wentzler

Ernst Albert Max Wentzler (born September 3, 1891 in Hann. Münden ; † August 9, 1973 ibid.) Was a German pediatrician who was involved as a T4 expert in the " child euthanasia " program during the Nazi era .

Career start

Ernst Wentzler, whose father was a leather manufacturer, began studying medicine after completing his school career . As a participant in the First World War , he had to interrupt his studies due to the war and was deployed as a field doctor at a reserve hospital in Hanover during the war . After the end of the war he finished his medical studies at the University of Göttingen in 1918 and was approved in 1919 . In the same year he received his doctorate in Göttingen with the dissertation "The development of pneumothorax therapy in recent years". med. PhD . He then worked as an assistant doctor under Erich Peiper at the University Children's Hospital in Greifswald . Wentzler eventually worked as a pediatrician in Berlin and from 1923 converted a house into a private children's clinic at his new place of residence on Veltheimpromenade (now Zeltinger Strasse 44) in Berlin-Frohnau , which he eventually managed. Wentzler's private practice was also located within the children's clinic. He acquired the building of the children's clinic in May 1934. His facility, which eventually comprised around 30 beds, was called the Frohnau Children's Clinic . In the 1920s he developed the so-called Wentzler warming bath , a kind of incubator .

time of the nationalsocialism

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he was admitted to the NSDAP on April 1, 1936, despite being banned from membership ( membership number 3,756,952). He was also a member of numerous NS organizations: the SA , the NS-Ärztebund , the German Labor Front , the NSV , the Reichsluftschutzbund , the Reichskriegerbund and the NS-Altherrenbund der Deutschen Studenten . From 1938 he was chair of the Association of German Children's Hospitals .

During the Nazi era, Wentzler's facility was called the Deutsches Kinderkrankenhaus e. V. designated. In this renowned children's clinic, the children of Nazi celebrities were treated. B. the children of Viktor Brack , Hans Hefelmann , Werner Blankenburg , Walther Darré and Hermann Göring . As a result of a vaccine damage, Kurt Blome's son died there .

Participation in child "euthanasia"

Wentzler was recruited by Karl Brandt in the course of 1939 to plan “ child euthanasia ” and, alongside Hans Heinze and Werner Catel, was one of the three main reviewers of the “Reich Committee for Scientific Research into Hereditary and Conventional Diseases” from autumn 1939 to early 1945 ". This three-party committee decided on the basis of the sent notification forms with patient data in a circular procedure about the life or death of the children recorded on the forms and was thus largely responsible for thousands of murders in the context of "child euthanasia". Wentzler also worked on the draft of the euthanasia law that had not come into force.

The existence of a “ children's department ”, a separate facility for carrying out “child euthanasia”, in Wentzler's clinic is now considered unlikely. Nonetheless, the clinic's documents provide clues for the killing of disabled children on site. In addition, patients were transferred to the state institute in Görden and the municipal mental hospital for children and adolescents Wiesengrund in Berlin-Wittenau, where they died.

post war period

After the end of the war, Wentzler moved to Hann. Münden, where he settled and practiced as a pediatrician. From his hometown he ran the facility economically until the end of his children's clinic in 1964. In the course of a preliminary investigation carried out before the Hamburg Regional Court against almost 20 accused of crimes in the context of child euthanasia, the First Criminal Chamber on April 19, 1949 put the accused out of prosecution, including Wentzler. Despite the proven killing of the so-called "Reich Committee children", the accused could not be proven to be illegal in their actions. (The judges of the Hamburg regional court, some of them former active National Socialists, stated that “the shortening of life unworthy of life” in no way “conflicts with the general moral law”). Wentzler testified several times in trials on the subject of euthanasia crimes, but was not prosecuted himself.

Fonts

• The development of pneumothorax therapy in recent years: From the Medical University Clinic Göttingen , Anklam, Göttingen 1920, Med. Dissertation 1919.
• Rickets prevention: common understanding Darst. D. Essence, d. Distribution, recognition u. Prevention d. "English disease" for understanding dvd Reichsgesundheitsführer-arranged measures , In: Schriftenreihe der Reichsgesundheitsführung. H. 1, Berlin, Vienna 1942.
• Better prevention - than cure !: About disease prevention in infant and Childhood f. Parents and Educator. Published in four editions from 1933 to 1947.
• Proper nutrition, healthy children. Published in nine editions from 1929 to 1966 and revised several times; most recently with Hanns Löhr: Proper nutrition for children from newborns to school children: With cooking instructions and Proposals for preventing diseases, Goldmann, Munich 1968.

literature

• Thomas Beddies, Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach: The pediatrician Dr. Ernst Wentzler and the Frohnau Children's Hospital . In: Berlin in Past and Present, Yearbook of the Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2002, pp. 137–157.
• Klaus Pegler: It happened in Frohnau. Volume 2, Alektor Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-88425-085-3 .
• Götz Aly : The burdened. "Euthanasia" 1939-1945. A history of society . Fischer, Frankfurt / Main 2013 ISBN 978-3-10-000429-1

Web links

• Literature by and about Ernst Wentzler in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Thomas Beddies, Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach: The pediatrician Dr. Ernst Wentzler and the Frohnau Children's Hospital . In: Berlin in Past and Present, Yearbook of the Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2002, pp. 140 ff.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Klaus Pegler: It happened in Frohnau , Volume 2, Alektor Verlag, Berlin 2006, p. 33f.
3. ↑ Thomas Beddies, Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach: The pediatrician Dr. Ernst Wentzler and the Frohnau Children's Hospital . In: Berlin in Past and Present, Yearbook of the Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2002, p. 142.
4. ↑ Thomas Beddies, Heinz-Peter Schmiedebach: The pediatrician Dr. Ernst Wentzler and the Frohnau Children's Hospital . In: Berlin in Past and Present, Yearbook of the Landesarchiv Berlin , Berlin 2002, p. 141.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 669.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Ernst Klee: What they did - What they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews. Frankfurt am Main 2004, p. 130 f.
7. ↑ Udo Benzenhöfer: The good death? History of euthanasia and euthanasia. 2nd Edition. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-525-30162-3 , pp. 104f.
8. ↑ cf. Udo Benzenhöfer : Nazi “Child Euthanasia”: “Without any moral scruples” ( Memento of the original from August 31, 2012 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. . In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt , issue 42, October 20, 2000, pp. A2766ff. 
9. ^ ^{A b} Thomas Beddies: The pediatrician and "euthanasia" expert Ernst Wentzler. In: Monthly Pediatrics. 151, 2003, pp. 1023f., Doi : 10.1007 / s00112-003-0812-0 .
10. ^ Klaus Pegler: It happened in Frohnau , Volume 2, Alektor Verlag, Berlin 2006, p. 35.
11. ^ Ernst Klee: "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life". S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1985. ISBN 3-10-039303-1 , p. 384.
12. ^ 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. 105.