Friedrich Knigge

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Friedrich Knigge (born August 11, 1900 in Jever , † December 2, 1947 in Hamburg ) was a German psychiatrist who was involved in Nazi crimes as part of child “euthanasia” during the Nazi era .

Life

After finishing school, Knigge completed a medical degree at the Universities of Munich and Würzburg . After graduating, he worked for six months as a medical intern with Max Nonne at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf and then for three years in Munich , where he received his specialist training as a neurologist and psychiatrist.

At the beginning of December 1929 he was taken on as a clerk in the Hamburg civil service and only became civil servant in March 1940. First he was a long-time assistant doctor at the Langenhorn Sanatorium and appeared as a psychiatric expert in court proceedings in Hamburg. At the beginning of May 1937 Knigge joined the NSDAP and in October 1939 became a member of the National Socialist Medical Association .

Knigge and Wilhelm Bayer , the director of the Rothenburgsort Children's Hospital , participated in a meeting of the “Reich Committee for the Scientific Assessment of Hereditary and Congenital Serious Ailments” in Berlin in December 1940 . Knigge then declared to the full-time alderman for the health administration in Hamburg, Friedrich Ofterdinger , ready to take over the management of a new euphemistic children's department called the children's “euthanasia” facility at the Langenhorn sanatorium. From the beginning of February 1941 until the station was closed at the beginning of July 1943, Knigge headed this children's department, which was actually subordinate to Ofterdinger. Of the 69 children admitted there, at least 22 were murdered there as a result of fatal medication and inadequate nutrition, 15 were transferred to other institutions and 32 were released. Knigge carried out dissections on six murdered children , and the brains were examined at the Neuroanatomical Institute of the Eppendorf University Clinic.

Knigge, promoted to senior physician in 1942 , became medical director of the facility, which had been known as the Langenhorn General Hospital since early November 1943, and remained in this position until the end of the war.

After the end of the war, medical students reported to the British military administration at the end of May 1945 as the head of the children's department at the children's hospital in Rothenburgsort, Wilhelm Bayer; as a result, etiquette and other staff from the Hamburg children's departments were also investigated. Knigge and Bayer were relieved of their functions on August 25, 1945. A request made by both doctors on November 20, 1945 to resume their jobs was not granted. Knigge, who, like Bayer, did not deny child killings himself, was subject to an occupational ban during the preliminary investigations. Neither of them saw any criminal offense in their actions.

Another case, which was opened against Knigge and three other doctors at the Langenhorn Hospital in 1946, involved the transfer of numerous patients to institutions where euthanasia was also practiced, in particular to the Obrawalde sanatorium near Meseritz in Brandenburg. The accusation against the doctors was: aiding and abetting murder . The doctors defended themselves by pointing out that the transfers and their exact number had been determined by Berlin and the Hamburg health authority. The court could not prove that the doctors knew that for many patients, the transfer was the safe route to death. The case is closed.

Knigge died on December 2, 1947, during the preliminary examinations of polio in the St. Georg Hospital .

literature

  • Marc Burlon: The “euthanasia” of children during National Socialism in the two children's departments in Hamburg , dissertation at the Medical Faculty of the University of Hamburg 2010. ( online, pdf )
  • 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 .
  • Peter von Rönn, Regina Marien-Lunderup, Michael Wunder, Eveline Sonn, Renate Otto, Marc Billhardt, Georg Dahmen: Paths to Death. Hamburg's Langenhorn Institute and euthanasia in the time of National Socialism ed. by Klaus Böhme and Uwe Lohalm, Hamburg 1993.
  • Michael Wunder: Euthanasia in the last years of the war - the years 1944 and 1945 in the sanatorium and nursing home Hamburg-Langenhorn , Husum 1992

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 319
  2. ↑ a b Marc Burlon: The “euthanasia” on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 66f.
  3. ↑ Marc Burlon: The “euthanasia” on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 62f.
  4. ↑ Marc Burlon: The "euthanasia" on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 67
  5. ↑ Marc Burlon: The “euthanasia” on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 146f.
  6. ↑ Marc Burlon: The "euthanasia" on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 158
  7. ↑ a b Marc Burlon: The "euthanasia" on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 189ff.
  8. ↑ Marc Burlon: The “euthanasia” on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 234
  9. ↑ Hamburg State Archives 147 Js 58/67
  10. ↑ Marc Burlon: The “euthanasia” on children during National Socialism in the two Hamburg children's departments , dissertation, Hamburg, 2010, p. 69
personal data
SURNAME Knigge, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and euthanasia offender
DATE OF BIRTH August 11, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Jever
DATE OF DEATH December 2, 1947
Place of death Hamburg