Falk Ruttke

Falk Alfred Ruttke (born November 11, 1894 in Halle (Saale) ; † September 9, 1955 in Stuttgart - Bad Cannstatt ) was a German lawyer . He is considered a prominent representative of the National Socialist racial hygiene and was among other things a legal commentator of the " Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases " one of the defining figures of the National Socialist racial legislation.

Live and act

Ruttke studied law in Halle ad Saale between 1912 and 1914 and between 1918 and 1920. During the First World War he fought as a member of the Flanders Marine Corps , most recently as the leader of a machine gun company. He received the Iron Crosses 1st and 2nd class as well as the Flanders Cross . In 1919 he was also a member of the Halle Freikorps . After receiving his doctorate in 1921, he broke off his legal clerkship to manage the business of the Rheinisch-Westfälischer Mietverein in Essen. In 1923 he became the syndic of the employers' association of Eisenberg in Thuringia and at the same time represented industry in the East Thuringia settlement committee. In Eisenberg he also sat on the city council between 1924 and 1927. In 1927 he took over the management of the social policy department of the Reich Association of the German Meat Industry. In 1931 he became a judge at the labor court in Greater Berlin.

Ruttke originally belonged to the DNVP and was a member of the Deutschvölkischer Schutz- und Trutzbund and the Stahlhelm . In May 1932 he joined the NSDAP (membership number 1.097.130). He had also been a member of the SS since 1933 (membership number 156.315) and was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer in September 1938 . When the National Socialists came to power , Ruttke was appointed Reich Commissioner of the "Reich Committee for Hygienic Education". Since May 1933 he was a member of the "Expert Committee for Population and Racial Policy" at the Reich Ministry of the Interior . In this function, he published the commentary on the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases” together with Arthur Gütt and Ernst Rüdin .

Title page by: Arthur Gütt / Ernst Rüdin / Falk Ruttke: Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases Offspring of July 14, 1933 . Munich 1934.

He also worked on the Nuremberg Laws . From 1936 Ruttke worked first as a temporary laborer, then as a councilor, and finally in 1937 as a senior councilor in the Reich Ministry of the Interior.

Ruttke was an exposed exponent of racial-biological convictions, which he linked with demands on racial hygiene. He advocated a doctrine of law as a "fighting science" and called for a harsh application of the racial laws against "internal and external enemies". In 1935 Ruttke was given a teaching position for “Race and Law” at the University of Berlin, and in 1938 a similar assignment in Vienna. In 1940 he took over a "Chair for Race and Law" and a corresponding institute at the University of Jena. In the autumn of 1940 Ruttke also trained SS members in the Warthegau on racial issues on a special assignment . On January 6, 1942, he was drafted into the navy and released from the university on September 13, 1945.

From 1945 to March 1948 Ruttke was interned. In the denazification process he was classified as “incriminated”. All of his writings and the magazine Recht der Rasse (Kohlhammer, Stuttgart), which he edited , were placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet occupation zone . Since 1952 he lived in Stuttgart, where he died three years later.

Fonts

• Falk Ruttke: The position of the Reich President to the Reich government after the constitution of the German Reich of August 11, 1919. Diss. Univ. Halle, 1921, Pritschow, Halle 1921.
• Falk Ruttke: A contribution to the question of the demarcation between the meat industry and the butcher's trade. , (Berlin) (Loewenthal) 1930.
• Arthur Gütt , Ernst Rüdin and Falk Ruttke: Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Offspring of July 14, 1933. With excerpt from the law against dangerous habitual criminals and on measures of security and reform of November 24, 1933. Lehmann, Munich 1934; 2nd edition, ibid. 1936.
• Falk Ruttke: Racial hygiene and law. In: Heredity and Racial Hygiene in the Volkish State. 1934, pp. 91-103.
• Falk Ruttke: Literature and educational material on people care. Race studies - race care - heredity - hereditary care - family history - family care. 11th edition 1935.
• Falk Ruttke: Race and Law in the German University System. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1936.
• Falk Ruttke: Race, Law and People. Contributions to racial law doctrine. Lehmann, Munich 1937.
• Falk Ruttke: The defense of the race through the law. Junker and Dünnhaupt, Berlin 1939.
• Falk Ruttke: Money does not replace blood. British population concerns. Rather, Berlin 1940.
• Falk Ruttke and Friedrich Lange: Dr. Friedrich Lange (1852-1917). A champion for the racial idea in difficult times. Lehmanns, Munich 1939.
• Falk Ruttke et al. : The Administration Academy. : a handbook for civil servants in the National Socialist state. Spaeth & Linde, Berlin 1934.

literature

• Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , pp. 143-144.
• Annett Hamann: "Men of the fighting science". The Nazi institutes of the University of Jena, closed in 1945. In: Uwe Hossfeld (Hrsg.): Combative Science: Studies at the University of Jena in National Socialism. Cologne 2003, pp. 202-234.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gisela Bock : Forced Sterilization in National Socialism, Opladen 1986, p. 84 ff.
2. ↑ Heinz Zehmisch: The German Justice - A Pillar of Racial Hygiene in the Third Reich, in: Ärzteblatt Sachsen, 4, 2005, p. 163.
3. ↑ www.polunbi.de