Erwin Villain
Erwin Karl Fritz Villain (born November 3, 1898 in Koepenick near Berlin, † July 1, 1934 in Berlin-Lichterfelde ) was a German medic and SA leader.
Live and act
Youth, World War I and Studies
Erwin Villain grew up as the son of the vice-principal Robert Villain in Köpenick. After attending primary school, he was taught at secondary schools in Köpenick and Oberschöneweide. He left the latter in November 1916 with the high school diploma when he was drafted into the Prussian Army.
After training with the 3rd Guards Regiment on foot, Villain took an active part in the First World War with the Reserve Infantry Regiment 202 from May 1917 . In August 1917 he was seriously injured by a shrapnel at Chemin des Dames , so that he had to remain in hospital treatment for the rest of the war. During this time he resumed school attendance, which he successfully completed at Easter 1918 by passing the school-leaving examination at the Hindenburg high school in Berlin-Oberschöneweide. In the summer semester of 1918, Villain enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin to study medicine. Villain's later rival Leonardo Conti was one of his fellow students at the Berlin University . In February 1919, after his wound had healed, Villain's official discharge from the army followed.
At Easter 1920 Villain passed the pre-medical examination and in December 1923 the medical state examination. He then worked from December 1923 to April 1, 1924 at the Pathological Institute of the Charité and from April 1 to October 1, 1924 for six months at the Polyclinic of the 2nd Medical Clinic of the Charité . Until his license to practice medicine, which he received on December 23, 1924, Villain was employed at the surgical clinic in Ziegelstrasse, where he worked as a volunteer assistant for a few months after that.
In the spring of 1925 concluded Villain at the Medical School of the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in its promotion to Dr. med. from. In his dissertation, which, according to the attached curriculum vitae, was completed on March 30, 1925, Villain dealt with the question of pigment excretion in the stomach.
Work as a doctor and SA medical officer
After graduating, Villain practiced in Berlin, joined the NSDAP there in the late 1920s and also joined the party army of the NSDAP, the so-called Sturmabteilung (SA). As a member of the National Socialist Medical Association (NSDÄB), Villain endeavored to implement National Socialist ideas in the associations of the Berlin medical community. In addition, Villain took over the post of standard doctor for the SA standard from Köpenick .
In November 1931 Villain was elected to the Berlin Medical Association together with Conti, meanwhile also a prominent "party doctor" of the NSDAP . Immediately before the National Socialist " seizure of power " in January 1933, Villain was appointed deputy chairman of the Köpenick, Treptow and Lichtenberg group in the group elections for the districts of the Greater Berlin Medical Association. This was the most important of the Berlin medical associations, which also formed the board of the Berlin Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians.
In 1933/34 Villain participated in this capacity in eliminating political opponents of National Socialism and in particular in taking measures against Jewish doctors in his area of responsibility. On various occasions, Villain was also associated with the Reichstag arson foundation in February 1933, occasionally even as the leader of a raid party that is said to have started the fire.
In April 1933 the board of directors of the Greater Berlin Medical Association was completely replaced with the exception of Villain at the instigation of Conti, who is now State Secretary in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior. In the place of Villain's non-National Socialist colleagues, there were other partisans of the NSDAP: The provisional board now consisted of Villain, Kurt Quandt and Martin Claus.
In June 1933 Villain - who, according to Edouard Calic, was "feared as a merciless thug" - took part in the so-called Köpenick Blood Week , during which the Köpenick SA harassed and murdered a few dozen communists , social democrats and Jews . Villain is said to have played a special role in the murder of members of the Social Democratic Reich Banner Black-Red-Gold . Rudolf Diels , the first head of the Gestapo , reports in his memoirs that Villain participated as a “specialist” in the “beatings” of opponents of the SA and the art of torture and mistreatment by resorting to “collections of whips and instruments of torture made of iron and rubber interwoven with steel ”to perfection. Harry Schulze-Wilde characterizes Villain in the same way as one of “the most terrible sadists” that ever existed, for example who gave arrested Social Democrats “caustic acids to drink” or “roasted them over an open fire”.
Attack on Conti, Trial and Death (1934)
Villain's old hostility to Conti finally escalated in the spring of 1934 when Conti refused to appoint Villain chairman and chairman of the court of honor of the Berlin Medical Association; a step that Conti justified with alleged "significant character deficiencies" Villains.
The background to this decision was the personal grudge that Conti harbored against Villain because he had been appointed head of the Berlin KV in January 1934 at the instigation of Gerhard Wagner , the chairman of the NSDÄB, who, like Villain, belonged to the SA - a post that Conti would also have liked to take over.
After Villain learned of Conti's decision not to appoint him for the post of chairman of the Berlin Medical Association and of the insulting reason with which Conti justified this step, he challenged him to a duel ("heavy saber demand"). Conti refused, pointing out that the Prussian Prime Minister Hermann Göring, as his superior, had forbidden him to accept the duel demand; However, it has been suspected on several occasions that Göring only issued the ban at Conti's request in order to give him an excuse to refuse to accept the duel demand.
Since he could not win his duel, Villain attacked Conti instead on March 4, 1934 during a conference of National Socialist doctors in Munich : he attacked Conti in the hallway in front of his hotel room at night and seriously injured him before hotel guests called the police. Villain was arrested, but after a short time released again at the instigation of the Reich doctor of the SA. The next day, Wagner Villain temporarily took leave of his offices in Berlin.
Soon afterwards, at Hermann Göring's request, Villain was arrested again to be brought to Berlin. The Bavarian Interior Minister Adolf Wagner prevented this, however, by having Villain freed on the train ride to the capital of the Reich. Villain, who was now wanted by an arrest warrant, stayed in hiding for some time in Bavaria , supported by friends from the Munich SA doctors . Under the protection of SA leaders, Villain was brought to Berlin to the apartment of the Berlin SA leader Ernst after his discovery in Partenkirchen .
On May 4, 1934, Villain was brought to court despite opposition from the Berlin SA. The trial ended with Villain's sentencing to eight months in prison. Villain appealed on appeal , as did the public prosecutor , who found the sentence too mild. In addition, Villain was expelled from the NSDAP.
The second trial no longer took place: On July 1, Villain was arrested in the context of the Röhm affair on behalf of the Secret State Police Office by SS-Obersturmführer Kurt Gildisch in Köpenick, brought to the Lichterfelde cadet institute and shot there by an SS commando.
Fonts
- Experimental investigations on the question of dye excretion in the stomach , Berlin 1925 (printed 1931). (Dissertation)
literature
- Judith Hahn: Erwin Villain and Leonardo Conti: Skirmishes among Nazi comrades. in: Deutsches Ärzteblatt Heft 42, Volume 104, 2007.
Individual evidence
- ^ Geoffrey Cocks: Psychotherapy in the Third Reich. The Goering Institute , 1997, p. 206.
- ^ Edouard Calic: Reinhard Heydrich. Key figure of the Third Reich , 1982, p. 150.
- ↑ Rudolf Diels: Lucifer Ante Portas. Between Severing and Heydrich , 1949, p. 278.
- ^ HS Hegner: The Reich Chancellery 1933-1945. Beginning and End of the Third Reich , 1966, p. 138.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Villain, Erwin |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Villain, Erwin Karl Fritz |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German medic and SA officer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 3, 1898 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Koepenick |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 1, 1934 |
| Place of death | Berlin-Lichterfelde |