Günther Hillmann

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Günther Hillmann (born April 15, 1919 in Ludwigslust ; † May 8, 1976 in Nuremberg ) was a German biochemist . During the Second World War he worked on a research project for which the concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele delivered blood samples from the Auschwitz concentration camp . After the war he headed the chemical institute of the nursing homes in Nuremberg.

Life

Hillmann was the son of a teacher. According to his own information, he belonged to the HJ , the NS motor vehicle corps and the NS riding corps. From 1937 to 1941 he studied chemistry at the Technical University of Danzig . He then worked for two years in the chemical department of the Pathological Institute of the Charité in Berlin with Karl Hinsberg on his doctoral thesis. He researched the question of whether and how cancer diseases biochemically changed the blood serum . The background to this project was the sensational cancer theory of Fritz Kögl and Emil Abderhalden's theory of "defense ferments" at the time. The aim was an enzymatic cancer diagnosis using a serum.

Hillmann was supposed to accompany Hinsberg to the Central Institute for Cancer Research in 1943 when he was appointed to the University of Posen . However, he also fell out personally with Hinsberg and, on the advocacy of the then DFG President Rudolf Mentzel, was given the opportunity to work with Adolf Butenandt at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry (KWI-B) with a grant from the DFG . Butenandt soon came to appreciate his new colleague, accepted him as a doctoral student and tried to keep him at the institute.

At Butenandt's mediation, Hillmann worked as a biochemical expert on a research project by Otmar von Verschuer , which was also based on the Abderhalden method and from which Verschuer hoped to obtain a serological determination of race, i.e. a kind of racial blood test. At this DFG project "Specific Proteins" also Verschuer assistant worked Josef Mengele with that in his capacity as camp doctor of the Auschwitz concentration camp conducted anthropological studies on "various racial groups" and sent 200 blood samples for processing to the Berlin laboratory. According to the American historian Robert Proctor, the Nobel laureate and later President of the Max Planck Society Butenandt was informed about the connections between the project and the project through Hillmann.

When the Berlin KWI-B under Butenandt was essentially relocated to Tübingen towards the end of the war, Hillmann acted as Butenandt's bridgehead in Berlin. Hillmann remained loyal to the institute even after the war ended. He received his doctorate in 1947 from the Technical University of Berlin ( on the cleavage of racemic amino acids into the optical antipodes in connection with peptide synthesis ). In 1949 he took over the management of the laboratory of the medical clinic in Tübingen . Here he completed his habilitation in 1956 and was appointed adjunct professor in 1962. In 1963 he went to Nuremberg , where he headed the Chemical Institute of the Municipal Hospitals until his death , one of the few laboratories of this type at municipal hospitals. On April 22, 1964, he was one of the founders of the German Society for Clinical Chemistry and was elected its first chairman.

Publications

  • About the cleavage of racemic amino acids into the optical antipodes in connection with the peptide synthesis . (1947).
  • Synthesis of the thyroid hormone . Tuebingen 1955.
  • Biosynthesis and metabolic effects of thyroid hormones. Tubingen 1961.

Web links

literature

  • Achim Trunk: Race Research and Biochemistry. A project - and the question of Butenandt's contribution. In: Wolfgang Schieder u. Achim Trunk (Ed.): Adolf Butenandt and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Science, industry and politics in the 'Third Reich'. Göttingen 2004, pp. 247–285.
  • In memoriam Günther Hillmann . In: Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine. 13, Heft 7 (1975), pp. 329-330, ISSN (Online) 1437-4331, ISSN (Print) 1434-6621, doi : 10.1515 / cclm . 1975.13.7.329 .
  • Robert N. Proctor: Adolf Butenandt (1903-1995). Nobel Prize Winner, National Socialist and MPG President. A first look at the estate . (= Results. Preprints from the research program "History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism"; 2), Berlin 2000. ( PDF )

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz. Perpetrators, accomplices, victims and what became of them. Lexicon of persons , Frankfurt / M. 2013, p. 176
personal data
SURNAME Hillmann, Günther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biochemist
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Ludwigslust
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1976
Place of death Nuremberg