Friedrich Berner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Friedrich Berner (born November 12, 1904 in Zwickau , † March 2, 1945 at Wronke in the Samter district ) was a German radiologist and SS-Hauptsturmführer . As head of the Hadamar killing center, Berner was involved in the National Socialist murders of the T4 .

Life

As the son of a gynecologist, Berner attended high school in his hometown, which he left in 1925 after graduating from the school. According to his own statements, Berner initially aimed to study engineering , but then decided on medicine at the request of his parents . From the summer semester 1926 to the winter semester 1927/28 he studied at the University of Rostock . In 1926 he became active in the Corps Vandalia Rostock . When he was inactive , he moved to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the Friedrichs University in Halle . In 1931 he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD . Approved as a doctor in the same year , he became an assistant doctor to the internist Hans Curschmann at the Rostock University Hospital . In September 1934 he went to the X-ray department of the Erfurt City Hospital . In May 1935 he moved to the Central X-ray Institute in the Mainz Municipal Hospital . After specialist recognition as a radiologist, he worked from September 1937 in which radiologists Hans Holfelder at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . Berner's marriage in 1933 had three children.

During the Weimar Republic , Berner was a member of the Technical Emergency Aid and of the Wehrwolf , a right-wing military association that mainly operated in Central Germany .

After handing over power to the National Socialists, Berner joined the NSDAP (membership no. 2.804.744) and the SA on May 1, 1933 . As a senior squad leader for the SA, he carried out numerous x-ray examinations. After the Röhm putsch , he joined the Schutzstaffel from the SA in Erfurt in November 1934 . Initially an SS candidate, he became an SS member on August 26, 1936 (membership no. 276.832) in the SS section "Rhine" . On January 1, 1937, he took over the leadership of the medical storm in the SS section. Since September 1939 SS-Obersturmführer , he was later a member of the Röntgensturmbann led by Hans Holfelder at the SS-Leadership Main Office .

Enlisted in the Luftwaffe (Wehrmacht) at the end of August 1939 , Berner took part in the campaign in the west , most recently as senior medical officer . On April 30, 1940 , he completed his habilitation in Frankfurt. After the trial lecture during a leave from the front in September 1940, he was appointed private lecturer in radiology on October 21 . His whereabouts until mid-1941 are unknown; he was probably still with the Wehrmacht.

According to a list from the T4 central office , Berner was a member of the T4 organization from May 15, 1941 to December 31, 1941 under the heading “Doctors in the Asylums”. From mid-June to autumn 1941 he was director and first gassing doctor in the Hadamar killing center as part of the National Socialist “euthanasia” program . With him also met Hans Bodo Gorgass one as a second gasification doctor and his deputy in Hadamar. Both doctors took over from their predecessors, Ernst Baumhard and Günther Hennecke , who had been working in Hadamar since January 13, 1941 and, after differences with the T4 organizer Viktor Brack , went to the Navy in the summer of 1941 . It is likely that the T4 central office was made aware of Berner by Friedrich Mennecke , the director of the Eichberg state hospital, or by Fritz Bernotat , the department head for institutional systems of the Nassau district association. According to witnesses, before his time in Hadamar, Berner was trained in the Hartheim killing center . Due to contradicting testimonies, it is uncertain whether Berner was also involved in the selection of concentration camp prisoners in the Buchenwald concentration camp in the course of Aktion 14f13 .

Like all T4 doctors in the killing centers, Berner also used a code name and signed correspondence with “Dr. Barth ”. According to later statements by Hadamar's T4 staff, he was conspicuous for his soldier demeanor, company roll calls and an overall strict regiment. The staff was ordered to do morning exercise and it was common for National Socialist songs to be sung at meals together.

In August 1941, Berner invited the staff of the killing center to an "anniversary celebration" on the occasion of the 10,000th gassed death in Hadamar. According to the Hadamar memorial employee, Peter Sandner, the “anniversary celebration”, confirmed by numerous testimonies, represented the “peak of the cynical approach to murderous everyday life” in Hadamar gave a speech and music was played:

"[...] Dr. Berner [declared] at the communal lunch table that the 10,000th dead person would be burned today, the entire staff had to be present for this purpose. We then gathered in the corridor in the right wing towards evening, where everyone received a bottle of beer and from where we went to the cellar. There a naked male corpse with a large head of water was laid out on a stretcher . With caution I declare with certainty that it was a real dead person and not a paper corpse. The corpse was placed on a kind of trough by the burners and pushed into the incinerator. For this purpose, [the administrative employee] Märkle, who had made himself up like a clergyman, gave a funeral sermon. "

According to the so-called Hartheim Document , 10,072 people were killed in Hadamar between January 1941 and the end of August 1941. This achieved the highest number of fatalities of all six gassing plants; so an average of 1,439 per month. The period in which Berner ran the gassing plant alone accounted for 4,170 victims.

After the first phase of the National Socialist "euthanasia" program was stopped in August 1941, Berner was replaced by Curt Schmalenbach at the end of 1941 as head of the Hadamar gassing plant, which was no longer in use. It is not known for sure whether Berner returned directly to Frankfurt from Hadamar or was in the Wehrmacht again in the meantime. In the second half of 1942, Berner held lectures at Frankfurt University on behalf of Holfelders; From September 1943 he was employed as an assistant doctor at the University X-ray Institute of the Sachsenhausen Municipal Hospital. In October 1943, Berner was appointed deputy head of the Holfelder X-ray Institute.

With effect from November 15, 1944, Berner was transferred from the Wehrmacht to the Waffen SS . According to his wife, Berner was missing from February 1945; According to information from the municipal hospital, he last stayed in the Posen area, where he was employed as Hauptsturmführer in the SS Röntgensturmbann. After the liberation , Berner was dismissed by the city of Frankfurt on the orders of the American military government. Berner's whereabouts were clarified in January 1950 by a notification from the German Office (WASt) , according to which he had died on March 2, 1945 at Wronke .

literature

  • Udo Benzenhöfer : Friedrich Berner - radiologist in Frankfurt, head physician of the Nazi "Euthanasia" center in Hadamar. In: Udo Benzenhöfer (eds.): Mengele, Hirt, Holfelder, Berner, von Verschuer, Kranz: Frankfurt university doctors of the Nazi era. Klemm & Ölschläger, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-932577-97-0 , pp. 61-78.
  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state . 11th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt / Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 .
  • Ernst Klee: Friedrich Berner. Entry in ders .: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 42
  • Henry Friedlander : The Road to Nazi Genocide. From euthanasia to the final solution. Berlin-Verlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-8270-0265-6 .
  • Peter Sandner: Administration of the murder of the sick. The Nassau District Association under National Socialism. Psychosozial-Verlag, Giessen, 2003, ISBN 3-89806-320-8 .
  • Gerhard Baader , Johannes Cramer, Bettina Winter: "Relocated to Hadamar." Historical series of publications by the State Welfare Association of Hesse, catalogs Volume 2, Kassel 1994, ISBN 3-89203-011-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ resume in habilitation Act of 12 January 1940 See Benzenhöfer, Bernese f, p 61st - Biographical information also in Sandner, Verwaltung , p. 726
  2. ↑ Entry in the Rostock matriculation portal
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 183 , 521
  4. ↑ Dissertation: Investigations on the Reid-Hunt reaction in thyroid, vegetative nervous and ulcer patients
  5. ↑ Habilitation thesis: Studies on the effects of X-rays on the mineral metabolism of unicellular organisms with the aim of finding an irradiation rhythm that completely destroys unicellular cultures in a short time with a low total amount of radiation. For the habilitation see Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 64 ff.
  6. ↑ Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 66
  7. ↑ Heidelberg documents, “Reviewer” list, facsimile in Klee “Euthanasia in the Nazi State”, p. 228 f.
  8. ↑ This assessment in Sandner, Verwaltung , p. 437.Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 70 agrees
  9. ↑ a b Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 69
  10. ↑ Alice Platen-Hallermund: “The killing of the mentally ill in Germany. From the German Medical Commission at the American Military Court ”, Frankfurt / Main 1948, p. 98. See also Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 70.
  11. ↑ See Sandner, Verwaltung , p. 465, footnote 163.
  12. ↑ a b Sandner, Verwaltung , p. 465.
  13. ^ Testimony of the Hadamar administrative employee Maximilian Lindner from April 6, 1946, quoted in: Thomas Vormbaum (Ed.): "Euthanasia" in court. The indictment of the public prosecutor at the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt / M. against Dr. Werner Heyde et al. From May 22, 1962 . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8305-1047-0 , p. 698
  14. ↑ Statistics in: Ernst Klee: Documents on "Euthanasia". Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt / Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 , pp. 232/233.
  15. ↑ Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 72.
  16. ↑ Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 73.
  17. ↑ Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 74
  18. ↑ Klee, Personenlexikon , p. 42.
  19. ↑ Benzenhöfer, Berner , p. 75.
personal data
SURNAME Berner, Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dr. Barth (code name in the T4 campaign)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS-Hauptsturmführer, gassing doctor in the Hadamar killing center
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Zwickau
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1945
Place of death Wronke , Samter district