Eugen Haagen

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Niels Eugen Haagen (born June 17, 1898 in Berlin ; † August 3, 1972 there ) was a German bacteriologist and virologist and professor at the University of Strasbourg . He led the Natzweiler-Struthof , among other typhus experiments carried on prisoners.

Life

Haagen, who studied medicine, was initially an assistant doctor at the Berlin Charité . From 1926 he worked as a research assistant at the Reich Health Office , where he was particularly active in virus and tumor research. From 1928 to 1929 Haagen was a visiting resident at the Rockefeller Institute in New York , where he became a government councilor in 1930 and also an extraordinary member of the health department of the Rockefeller Foundation . At the end of the 1920s he brought out scientific publications together with Rhoda Erdmann . From 1933 Haagen worked at the Robert Koch Institute and in 1936 took over the department for experimental cell and virus research. In addition, he was appointed professor and advised as a hygienist at the Berlin Air Fleet Doctor I. The development of a typhoid vaccine made him on the list of candidates for the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1936 . Between 1937 and 1939 he dealt with tumor research, a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 1939 he was co-editor of the medical standard work "Handbuch der Viruskrankheiten". The NSDAP stepped Haagen at the 1937th Haagen was also a member of the NSV , the Reichsbund der Deutschen Officials , the Reichsluftschutzbund and the NS-Fliegerkorps . In 1944 he became a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in Halle (Saale) .

In October 1941 Haagen became professor for hygiene and bacteriology at the University of Strasbourg and also director of the local hygienic institute; At the same time he became senior staff doctor and consultant hygienist for the air fleet doctor Reich.

After animal experiments, Haagen carried out typhus tests on 28 Polish prisoners in the Schirmeck-Vorbruck security camp from May 1943 . Haagen's first series of experiments with the typhus vaccine he had developed killed at least two Polish prisoners. Of the 100 Sinti and Roma who were transferred from Auschwitz to Natzweiler-Struthof at the end of 1943 for further typhus tests, 18 died on the journey to Natzweiler due to their poor health. Haagen had the survivors transferred back to Auschwitz, since he found them unsuitable for human experiments after preliminary medical examinations. At the beginning of February 1944 at the latest, a new series of typhus tests began in Natzweiler with 89 Sinti and Roma, some of whom were released from the Wehrmacht , and which claimed up to 50 victims. Another series of experiments with 200 prisoners was probably not carried out. With regard to jaundice, Haagen reported to Hermann Göring in his capacity as President of the Reich Research Council on January 21, 1944 : the presence of viruses had been checked in a number of patients by puncturing the liver and gall bladder. By vaccinating mice, three strains of the virus have now been bred. Until autumn 1944, Haagen continued his typhus experiments in Natzweiler, but also research on epidemic influenza and jaundice on prisoners. These test series, funded by the DFG, were carried out on behalf of the Air Force . Due to the war, Haagen had the hygiene institute relocated from Strasbourg to Saalfeld / Saale in 1944 .

After the end of the war

In April 1945 Haagen was taken prisoner by the United States, where he remained until June 1945. Subsequently, he let himself be recruited by the Soviet military administration in Germany and founded a medical research institute at the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch. On November 16, 1946, he was arrested by the British military police while visiting Berlin-Zehlendorf. During his several weeks imprisonment in Minden, he was assigned as a witness for the Nuremberg medical trial . In January 1947 he was extradited to France.

Together with Otto Bickenbach , Haagen was indicted on December 24, 1952 in the military court in Metz. The condemnation of both of them to life-long forced labor for “the crime of using harmful substances and poisoning” was rejected in January 1954 by a military court in Paris. On May 15, 1954, Haagen and Bickenbach were sentenced to twenty years of forced labor in Lyon, but were given amnesty in 1955. He then married Brigitte Crodel, then Haagen-Crodel, who was a medical-technical assistant during his typhus tests . With her he worked on the research project "About the occurrence of so-called cytopathogenic effects in normal cell cultures", again funded by the DFG and published in 1957. From 1956 to 1965 he worked at the " Federal Research Center for Virus Diseases in Animals " in Tübingen. Then he moved back to Berlin and from 1962 wrote the unfinished work “Virus Diseases of Man”, which he had begun. Haagen died in Berlin in August 1972.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 (= Fischer 16048. The time of National Socialism ). 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-14906-1 .
  • Wolfram Fischer: Exodus of Sciences from Berlin: Questions - Results - Desiderata. Development before and after 1933. (= Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Research report 7). De Gruyter, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-11-013945-6 .
  • Alexander Mitscherlich , Fred Mielke (ed.): Medicine without humanity: documents of the Nuremberg medical process. Fischer, Heidelberg 1960; The 16th edition of the paperback will be distributed in 2008, ISBN 3-596-22003-3 .
  • Raphael Toledano: Les expériences médicales du Professeur Eugen Haagen de la Reichsuniversität Strasbourg. Faits, contexte et procès d'un médecin national-socialiste. 2 volumes. 2010 (medical dissertation, University of Strasbourg, 2010).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 366ff.
  2. ↑ Struthof - The site of the former Natzweiler concentration camp: The medicine of the Nazis and their experiments
  3. ↑ a b c Cf. Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt 2007, p. 213.
  4. ^ Wolfram Fischer: Exodus of Sciences from Berlin: Questions - Results - Desiderata , Academy of Sciences in Berlin, p. 453.
  5. ↑ Documentation and cultural center of German Sinti and Roma: Sinti and Roma in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp (PDF; 443 kB)
  6. ↑ Memorial work: On the way to a history of the Natzweiler concentration camp
  7. ^ Nuremberg documents, Doc. NO-138. In: Stanislav Zámečník: That was Dachau. Luxemburg 2002, p. 284. Translated into French: C'était ça, Dachau. 1933-1945 . Le Cherche Midi, 2013 ISBN 2749130808 , readable online (not paginated in this version).
  8. ^ A b c Wolfram Fischer: Exodus of Sciences from Berlin: Questions - Results - Desiderata , Academy of Sciences in Berlin, p. 452.
personal data
SURNAME Haagen, Eugene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haagen, Niels Eugen (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German bacteriologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 3rd August 1972
Place of death Berlin