Fritz Lejeune

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Friedrich August Joseph Lejeune , called Fritz (* 1. July 1892 in Cologne , † 26. October 1966 in Villach , Austria ) was a German doctor and dentist, doctor able politician and medical historian and founding president of the German Child Protection Association eV

Career

Fritz Lejeune, who grew up as the son of a businessman in Cologne, passed the secondary school exams there in 1912 . Early on, he showed an interest in and talent for foreign languages. He studied medicine, dentistry and comparative linguistics at the universities of Bonn and Greifswald . In the First World War he served as a doctor in a reserve battalion to a disease in 1916. In the same year his doctorate he in Greifswald in Romanisten Gustav Thurau with a thesis on the Cologne writer and translator John Fastenrath (1839-1908) as an intermediary between Germany and Spain for Dr. phil. 1918 followed, also in Greifswald, the doctorate to the Dr. med. as well as a doctorate in dentistry in Königsberg in 1922 .

Lejeune also completed his habilitation in Greifswald in 1922 for the history of medicine and then taught there as a private lecturer before moving back to Cologne in 1925. In 1927 he was given a teaching position for the history of medicine at the University of Cologne , which in 1928 appointed him as a non-official extraordinary professor. In order to secure the livelihood of his family, he first worked as a general practitioner in Greifswald, then also in Cologne.

Lejeune, who had been involved in nationalist and ethnic circles after the First World War, was a member of the NSDAP as early as 1925/26 ( membership number 3,964) and at that time acted alongside the mathematician Theodor Vahlen as the deputy Gauleiter in Pomerania . In 1932 he rejoined the party. He was a member of the SA, the Sturmabteilung , the paramilitary fighting organization of the NSDAP during the Weimar Republic , which, as a police force, played a decisive role in the rise of the National Socialists . He later became a member of the SS, the Schutzstaffel (SS), the most important organ of terrorism and repression in the Nazi state, which he himself admitted. The SS was instrumental in the planning and implementation of war crimes and crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust. Furthermore he belonged to the German Reich Warrior Association "Kyffhäuser", the NSV , the NS-Ärztebund and the NS-Lehrerbund . From 1928 to 1934 he was chairman of the politically right-wing Reichsnotgemeinschaft Deutscher Ärzte , a pool for mostly young doctors who were not licensed by the health insurance companies and who felt they were insufficiently represented by the established medical professional organizations. When the association was transferred to Nazi organizations in 1934, Lejeune was appointed to the Reich Committee for Doctors and Health Insurance Funds .

The power of the National Socialists welcomed Lejeune. His early involvement in the Nazi movement helped his career from 1933. From then on, he held various offices in Cologne university committees, and he also held various positions in the Nazi lecturers. In the winter semester of 1934/35 he was appointed head of the Portuguese-Brazilian Institute at the University of Cologne. Its director and founder, the important Romanist Leo Spitzer , had lost his teaching license as a Jew. Lejeune used the institute as an instrument for German propaganda abroad and for cultural exchange with the fascist-authoritarian Portuguese state.

Despite everything, Lejeune did not succeed in obtaining a full professorship in Cologne. Instead, he moved to Vienna in 1939 and took over the management of the Institute for the History of Medicine. Here he succeeded Max Neuburger, who was expelled after the Anschluss in March 1938 . Under Lejeune, the library in the Josephinum expanded its holdings considerably between 1940 and 1945, not least with the use of "Aryanized" and stolen books. When the Nazi regime collapsed, Lejeune left Vienna. Arrested by US troops in early April 1945, he remained detained in the Glasenbach / Salzburg internment camp until the end of 1946 and was deported to Germany on release.

During his imprisonment, he was given leave of absence from university service on May 10, 1945 and released as a Reich German on August 23, 1945 . Lejeune's efforts to continue his academic career in the post-war period failed. He remained active as a journalist, now based in Hamburg . In 1951 he successfully published a German-English dictionary for doctors. He found a new field of activity primarily as a co-founder (1953 in Hamburg) and first President of the German Child Protection Association (until 1964). In this function he also drew attention to himself with drastic demands: For example, according to a Spiegel article in 1962, he suggested that "obviously mentally ill drive criminals", but also "people suffering from severe schizophrenia", should move to their own settlements in "inaccessible mountain valleys or be forcibly isolated [...] on lonely islands ". Nevertheless, the Child Protection Association appointed him its honorary president. Furthermore, Lejeune was from 1952 Senator of the German Society for Science and Research. In addition, from 1953 he was a consulting doctor on the board of the German salaried health insurance . He retired in Hamburg in 1959 .

Despite numerous publications and organizational skills, Lejeune's scientific influence in the history of medicine remained modest. His work was mostly received with skepticism. No medical history journal dedicated an obituary to him.

At its general meeting in 2017, the German Child Protection Association decided to distance itself from its former President Lejeune because of his commitment to the Nazi regime and to no longer name him - at least "in future publications" - as honorary president.

Works (selection)

  • The German-Spanish friendship efforts of Johannes Fastenrath . Abel, Greifswald 1916 (98 pages) [= Diss. Phil., Univ. Greifswald; extended version in the Romanisches Museum series, vol. 11, Bruncken, Greifswald 1917 (180 pages)].
  • The Albee operation, its successes and application at the Surgical Clinic in Greifswald . Hans Adler, Greifswald 1917 (48 pages) [= Diss. Med. Univ. Greifswald].
  • Dentistry in the thirteenth century with special reference to Guglielmo da Salicetos and Lanfranchis (according to Latin, Italian and Spanish incunabula) (work of the German-Nordic Society for the History of Medicine, Dentistry and Natural Sciences; 2). Bamberg, Greifswald 1923 (81 pages) [= Diss. Med. dent., Univ. Koenigsberg].
  • The bridge. Clinical images in 6 languages. A helping hand for doctors in treating foreign-language patients . Thieme, Leipzig 1941.
  • Guide to the History of Medicine . Thieme, Leipzig 1943.
  • German-English, English-German dictionary for physicians = German-English, English-German dictionary for physicians . Vol. 1: German - English. Thieme, Stuttgart 1951; Vol. 2: English - German. Thieme, Stuttgart 1953 (together with Werner E. Bunjes) [further editions 1954 and 1958; edit again 1968].
  • Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland : Macrobiotics or The Art of Extending Human Life . Single u. ed. by F. Lejeune (the text follows the 8th edition from 1860), Hippokrates-Verlag, Stuttgart 1958.

literature

  • Klaus Schmierer: Medical history and politics. Careers of Fritz Lejeune in the Weimar Republic and in National Socialism (Treatises on the history of medicine and natural sciences; 96). Matthiesen Verlag, Husum 2001, ISBN 978-3-7868-4096-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Lejeune: The German-Spanish friendship efforts of Johannes Fastenrath . Abel, Greifswald 1916.
  2. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 365.
  3. ↑ Kyra T. Inachin: "Martyrs with a small heap of faithful". The first Gauleiter of the NSDAP in Pomerania Karl Theodor Vahlen . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . tape 49 , no. 1 , 2001, p. 31–51 , doi : 10.2307 / 30195559 ( ifz-muenchen.de [PDF; accessed on August 31, 2017]).
  4. ↑ Dominik Groß : Dentists in the “Third Reich” and in post-war Germany. A dictionary of persons. Stuttgart 2020.
  5. ^ Klaus Schmierer: Medical history and politics. Careers of Fritz Lejeune in the Weimar Republic and in National Socialism . Husum 2001, p. 237 .
  6. ↑ a b c Roman Pfefferle, Hans Pfefferle: Glimpflich denazisiert. The professorships of the University of Vienna from 1944 in the post-war years (= writings of the archives of the University of Vienna; 18). V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2014, p. 330.
  7. ↑ Rainer Stommer: Medicine in the service of racial ideology. The "Leadership School of the German Medical Association" in Alt Rehse . Ch.links, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-86153-477-8 , p. 57-60 .
  8. ↑ Mentzel Walter; Albrecht Harald: The "Antiquarian and Export Bookstore Alfred Wolf" - formerly Hans Peter Kraus and Leo Weiser. The story of a robbery . In: Regine Dehnel (Ed.): Nazi looted property in museums, libraries and archives. Fourth Hanover Symposium . Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-465-03761-3 , p. 441-454 .
  9. ↑ Walter Mentzel; Bauer Bruno: Breaks in the development of medical libraries in Vienna during the Nazi regime: Notes on the history of the predecessor libraries of the University Library of the Medical University of Vienna . In: Gertrude Enderle-Burcel, Alexandra Neubauer-Czettl, Edith Stumpf-Fischer (eds.): Breaks and Continuities 1933–1938–1945. Case studies on administration and libraries . Studies Verlag, Innsbruck 2013, ISBN 978-3-7065-5198-4 .
  10. ↑ Key date: November 16, 2008 - 55 years ago: German Child Protection Association founded. WDR, accessed on August 30, 2017 .
  11. ↑ The Insane: Islands of the Damned. In: Der Spiegel. March 14, 1962. Retrieved August 30, 2017 .
  12. ↑ DKSB: Decision of the General Assembly 2017. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 30, 2017 ; accessed on August 11, 2017 . 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dksb.de
personal data
SURNAME Lejeune, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lejeune, Friedrich August Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor, dentist and medical historian
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH October 26, 1966
Place of death Villach , Austria