Eugen Steels

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Eugen Stähle (born November 17, 1890 in Stuttgart , † November 13, 1948 in Münsingen ) was a German physician and politician ( NSDAP ).

Life

After attending elementary school and secondary school in Stuttgart, Stähle studied medicine in Tübingen and Berlin from 1908 to 1913 . In 1914 he received his medical license. In the same year he received his doctorate.

After a short internship at the Polyclinic in Tübingen, Stähle took part in the First World War as a war volunteer from August 1914 , where he worked as a grenadier , field junior, assistant, senior and regimental doctor in the grenadier regiment "Queen Olga" (1st Württembergisches) No. 119 was used. During the war he was badly damaged by gas poisoning . In 1919, at the time of his dismissal with the rank of medical officer of the reserve, Stähle was holder of the Iron Cross of both classes, the Frederick Order II. Class and the Wound Badge .

In 1919, as a member of the Epp Freikorps, he took part in the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet Republic . He then worked until 1924 as chief physician at the Waldeck health care facility near Nagold . In 1923 and again - after its temporary ban in 1924 - in August 1927, he joined the NSDAP ( membership number 65,877) and took over the management of the Nagold branch. In 1930 he became district chairman of the National Socialist German Medical Association . In 1931, Stähle, who had been a specialist in internal affairs and nervous diseases in Nagold since 1920, became head physician at the Bad Röthenbach convalescent home .

From March to November 1933, Stähle sat in the Reichstag as a member of the NSDAP . After the National Socialist " seizure of power " in 1933, Stähle headed the health service department as ministerial director in the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior. In 1934 he also became district manager for public health in the Württemberg district . In December 1935, Stähle became chairman of the Württemberg regional association of the Reichsbund der Kinderreich (RdK) and at the same time a member of the ring of honorary leaders of the RdK. Furthermore, he was chairman of the Stuttgart branch of the National Socialist War Victims Supply (NSKOV). In November 1942 he took over the chairmanship of the Gaugesundheitsrat for Württemberg-Hohenzollern and at the same time carried the title of "Gaugesundheitsführer". Hitler appointed Steels professor in January 1943 .

According to his own statements, in autumn 1939 Herbert Linden informed Stähle about the planned National Socialist murders of the disabled and mentally ill (“ euthanasia ”) in the “ Action T4 ” . In October 1939, Stähle played a key role in the selection of Grafeneck Castle on the Swabian Alb as the killing facility for “Aktion T4”. During “Aktion T4”, the department headed by Stähle took on the role of a regional central office in the Württemberg Ministry of the Interior; In doing so, Stähle made "apparently without hesitation and in a comprehensive manner contributions to the murder of the sick." Stähle signed letters ordering the transfer of sick people from institutions in Württemberg to the Grafeneck killing center. According to later statements by Reinhold Vorberg , the head of the Gekrat in charge of the patient transports, discussions about the relocations took place at Stähle. In the spring of 1940, Stahl was present at the gassing of women in Grafeneck . He responded to protests by representatives of the churches against the murders of the sick in Grafeneck, which became known despite secrecy, with the statement "The 5th commandment : You should not kill, is not a command of God at all, but a Jewish invention."

After the cessation of the murders in Grafeneck in December 1940, Stähle considered it “natural” that the directors of the institutions would “continue to pursue euthanasia themselves.” In the second phase of the National Socialist murders, the Brandt campaign , numerous patients were suffered from systematic malnutrition or overdose murdered by drugs. In the final phase of the National Socialist regime, sick slave laborers were also victims of the murders. In April 1945, Stähle asked a prison doctor, albeit in vain, “to 'transfer' 100 sick Eastern workers”.

After the Second World War, Stahl, who was also the holder of the Golden Party Badge, was arrested by the Allies and interrogated several times. He died in 1948 as an inmate on remand in the Münsingen district hospital. Previously, like the assistant to euthanasia doctor Karl Lempp , Magdalena Schütte, he had issued a clean bill of health for him. She and the highest-ranking medical officer Stähle, who organized the euthanasia program in Baden-Württemberg and was therefore Lempp's superior, were the most important alleged, and at the time accepted as such, “exonerating witnesses” for Lempp for his denazification .

His work History of the National Socialist German Medical Association was published in the Soviet occupation zone . V., Gau Württemberg-Hohenzollern placed on the list of literature to be removed.

Fonts

  • On remission in the symptoms of syringomyelia , Leipzig 1915.
  • History of the National Socialist German Medical Association V., Gau Württemberg-Hohenzollern , Stuttgart 1940.

literature

  • Joachim Lilla , Martin Döring, Andreas Schulz: extras in uniform: the members of the Reichstag 1933–1945. A biographical manual. Including the Volkish and National Socialist members of the Reichstag from May 1924 . Droste, Düsseldorf 2004, ISBN 3-7700-5254-4 , p. 637 f .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 594.
  2. ↑ Stähles statement of June 7, 1948, see Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick and Jews. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 , p. 85.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life". Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 , pp. 89ff.
  4. ↑ This assessment by Peter Sandner: Verwaltung des Krankenmordes. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism. ( Memento of the original from March 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.8 MB) (= historical series of publications by the State Welfare Association of Hesse , university publications , volume 2), Psychosozial, Gießen 2003, ISBN 3-89806-320-8 , p. 385.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lwv-hessen.de
  5. ↑ Klee, "Euthanasia" , pp. 125f, 271, 327.
  6. ^ Sandner, Verwaltung , p. 442.
  7. ↑ Klee, "Euthanasia" , p. 163.
  8. ↑ Stähle on December 4, 1940 to an Evangelical High Church Council in Württemberg, cited in Klee, Euthanasia , p. 16.
  9. ^ Statement by the director of Zwiefalten, quoted in Klee, "Euthanasie" , p. 341.
  10. ^ Sandner, Verwaltung , p. 684.
  11. ↑ zu Schütte, head of the Stuttgart »children's department«, a code name for the murder program, see Peter Sandner, Verwaltung des Krankenmordes. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism. Giessen 2003, pp. 532 - 566, here p. 536
  12. ↑ These Persilscheine played a role again in 2009 when the grandson of the perpetrator, Volker Lempp, referred to them in order to ultimately unsuccessfully take legal action against a book about Stuttgart Nazi perpetrators
  13. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-s.html
personal data
SURNAME Steels, Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicians and politicians (NSDAP), MdR
DATE OF BIRTH November 17, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH November 13, 1948
Place of death Münsingen