Georg Benjamin

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Georg Benjamin ( September 10, 1895 in Berlin - August 26, 1942 in Mauthausen concentration camp ) was a German pediatrician and resistance fighter against National Socialism . He was the brother of the philosopher Walter Benjamin .

Georg Benjamin in 1926
Georg Benjamin as school doctor in 1927

life and death

Benjamin came from a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. He visited the Grunewald Gymnasium in Berlin and began 1914 in Geneva a degree in mathematics , however, then volunteered for military service. After his second wound in the First World War, he studied chemistry, physics and medicine in Berlin from the summer semester of 1918 , then medicine in Marburg and again in Berlin. He joined the social working group, a loose association of students and workers, and in 1921 he moved to the single home in Berlin-Wedding on Schönstedtstrasse for some time to get to know the living conditions of single men in the Berlin workers' district of Wedding . In May 1922 he passed the state examination at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin and received his doctorate from the social hygienist Alfred Grotjahn with a thesis on single homes at the end of the year . In 1923 he passed the specialist examination at the Social Hygiene Academy in Berlin-Charlottenburg .

Badstrasse 40, Benjamin's place of work

Benjamin's practical work in medicine began with the acceptance of an assistant doctor position in the baby care department of the Wedding district. From September 1924 he initially worked temporarily, after a six-month trial period as an official school doctor and pediatrician for the Wedding district. In this function he maintained a doctor's room in the secular collective school in Pankstrasse in the Gesundbrunnen district and combined the medical care of over 6000 school children in his district with educational activities. He took over the medical care of a recreation camp for working class children and led youth consecration courses . In the summer of 1931 Georg Benjamin was the chief pediatrician in a children's camp for Soviet children in Heringsdorf ( Usedom ). A report by the responsible police chief of the city of Szczecin names the local residents' displeasure with children walking around naked, disturbing peace, propaganda posters and the fear that “Bolshevik secret meetings with German communists would be held” in the children's home.

As a doctor organized in the Socialist Medical Association, Benjamin participated in the development of the Proletarian Health Service from 1922 , soon as its 2nd chairman. In this position he operated the reintegration of this opposition group into the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund , from which he was temporarily excluded. After the self-dissolution of the Proletarian Health Service in 1926, Benjamin became involved in the left opposition against the leadership of the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund and published its magazine Der oppositionelle Arbeiter-Samariter . He also worked for the International Workers Aid . Scientifically and socio-politically, he devoted himself to the topics of child labor , child care and nutrition, and the abortion paragraph 218 . After he had been reprimanded by the social democratic district mayor in 1931 and dismissed from the public service, he began working as a doctor at the Soviet embassy in Berlin and opened a private practice near his apartment in Wedding.

Benjamin became politically active from 1920, first in the USPD and from 1922 in the KPD . In 1929 he was elected as a member of the Wedding District Assembly and was re-elected in the March 1933 elections. Then he worked in the district leadership of the illegal KPD. Because of this activity, he was placed in " protective custody " on April 12, 1933 , after his pre-trial detention at the end of April in the Plötzensee prison and in September in the new Sonnenburg concentration camp , from which he was released in December 1933. However, he was banned from his profession and excluded from the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians and the Medical Association . After his release, he worked for the KPD's illegal Berlin-Brandenburg district leadership. He wrote reports on the situation of workers in Berlin's large factories and translated articles from French, English and Russian newspapers for circulation in German resistance circles, including an article by Georgi Dimitrov from Pravda for the internal use of his party in 1936, before his new arrest . His political activity led to a new arrest on May 14, 1936 and to his delivery to the Columbia concentration camp in Berlin, then to pre-trial detention in Moabit Prison and, after his conviction for "preparation for high treason" in October 1936, to a six-year prison sentence he spent in the Brandenburg-Görden prison. There he was affected by the increasingly discriminatory special treatment of Jewish political prisoners. After serving this prison sentence, the final report of the prison administration stated: “The sentence served had no influence on the Jew. His political attitudes must still be assessed negatively. ”From there he was first sent to the Wuhlheide labor camp near Berlin and then to the Mauthausen concentration camp , where he died shortly after his arrival in August 1942. The death list in the camp states that the cause of death was “suicide by high voltage”. Similarly, the message from the Mauthausen headquarters to the widow speaks of “suicide by touching the power line”, while the death certificate only mentions that “doctor Israel Georg Benjamin” died on August 26, 1942 at 1.30 am. Hilde Spiel , on the other hand, writes in her autobiography that Benjamin was slain. Benjamin's grave is located in the Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof Stahnsdorf in field B IW II-6.

family

Georg Benjamin came from a liberal, upper-class family in which the younger generation became politically conscious and sometimes also politically active. This was true most radically for himself since he moved from his parents' house in Grunewald to proletarian areas of Berlin-Friedrichshain and finally permanently Berlin-Weddings , before his arrest in 1933 briefly to Berlin-Pankow. Here he moved from the single home in Berlin-Wedding to a small apartment in Nazarethkirchstrasse in 1923, and after his marriage in 1926 to a spacious apartment in Bruno Taut's new housing estate on Schillerpark , where he worked with his wife in a KPD cell. In 1931 they both moved into an apartment in the so-called Pankehallen of the Ade-Arnheim safe factory in Badstrasse am Gesundbrunnen. Georg Benjamin's brother was the philosopher Walter Benjamin, who did not belong to any party, but had sympathized with communism since the 1920s. Walter Benjamin was often held up by friends of his brother's political activity as a role model, for example by the Latvian activist Asja Lacis . The brothers shared a lifelong interest in brain teasers and the game of chess .

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His wife Hilde Benjamin worked as a lawyer for the Red Aid of the KPD, in 1953 she became Minister of Justice of the GDR. His son Michael was born in 1932, was a “ half-Jew ” according to the race laws and was therefore discriminated against until 1945. He was scientifically active at the Academy for State and Law in Potsdam and became known after 1990 as a representative of the Communist Platform in the PDS and until his death (2000). One cousin was the poet Gertrud Kolmar , who remained in close contact with the family even after Benjamin was imprisoned. She was killed as a Jew in 1943. Walter and Georg's sister, Dora Benjamin , worked in various areas of social welfare in Berlin, went into exile in 1933 and died in Switzerland in 1946 at the age of forty-five. Walter Benjamin's wife, who was also called Dora, became known through the philosopher's published correspondence.

Honors

Berlin memorial plaque in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen (Badstrasse 40)

Two memorial plaques in Berlin commemorate the places where he worked:

In Berlin-Staaken , Schulstr. 13, honors him on the site of the former district hospital Nauen Dr. Georg Benjamin a memorial stone .

Benjamin's name is listed in the memorial of the socialists in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde as a member of the anti-fascist resistance.

Until 1992, a school for the physically disabled in Berlin-Lichtenberg , which is now called the Carl-von-Linné School, bore the honorary name of this resistance fighter. A board attached to this special school has been removed.

A memorial plaque for "Executed and Murdered Weddinger Antifascists", which contained Georg Benjamin's name, was soon removed by strangers. It was erected on Nettelbeckplatz in Weddingen in the summer of 1951.

The NVA Kurheim Sorge (Harz) (former Johanniter-Heilstätte Sorge ) bore his name until 1989, as did the district hospital in Staaken-West in the GDR.

The Academy of Health Berlin / Brandenburg eV in Berlin-Buch was called from 1974 to 1990 "Medical College Dr. Georg Benjamin ".

The miners' hospital of the SDAG Wismut in Erlabrunn / Erzgebirge, today “Kliniken Erlabrunn gGmbH”, was called “Bergarbeiterkrankenhaus Dr. Georg Benjamin ".

In 1974 the newly laid out Georg-Benjamin-Strasse in Berlin-Buch was named after him.

Journal articles (selection)

  • The socialist doctor . Quarterly magazine of the "Association of Socialist Doctors".
    • Expansion of school hygiene. Volume II (1926), Issue 4 (December), pp. 13-17 ( digitized version ).
    • Guiding principles for expanding social hygiene. Volume III (1928), Issue 4 (April), p. 18 f. ( Digitized version ).
    • The health conditions of the German people in 1926. Volume III (1928), Issue 4 (April), pp. 32–34 ( digitized version ).
    • The "apolitical" German medical journal. Volume VIII (1932), Issue 11-12 (November-December), p. 175 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Writings in: Irina Winter: Georg Benjamin - doctor and communist. VEB People and Health, Berlin 1962:
    • Social hygiene and health policy issues. Pp. 57-97.
    • On questions of child labor in Germany. Pp. 99-119.
    • School hygiene. Pp. 121-143.
    • Industrial hygiene, pp. 145–182.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Georg Benjamin  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Georg Benjamin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Volker Klimpel : Doctors deaths. Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2769-8 , pp. 73-75.
  2. ↑ Gerhild HM Komander: The Wedding. On the way from red to colorful. Berlin Story Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 978-3-929829-38-9 , p. 179 f.
  3. ↑ Hilde Benjamin: Georg Benjamin. A biography . 3. Edition. Hirzel, Leipzig 1987, p. 45 (Facsimiles of the documents, Figs. 12-15).
  4. ↑ Hilde Benjamin: Georg Benjamin. A biography. 3. Edition. Hirzel, Leipzig 1987, p. 51 f.
  5. ↑ Bernhard Müller (Ed.): Wedding. Paths to the history and everyday life of a Berlin workers' district . Sattbuch, Berlin 1990, p. 40 f .
  6. ^ Report by the Stettin Police President to the President of the Province of Pomerania . Landesarchiv Berlin, S. 3 (A Pr. Br. Rep. 030 Tit. 95, No. 21614).
  7. ↑ Hartwig Hawerkamp: Contributions to the history of the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund from its foundation (1888) to its ban (1933). Monsenstein and Vannerdat, Münster 2012, ISBN 978-3-8405-0070-1 , urn : nbn: de: hbz: 6-39389500393 (medical dissertation, University of Münster, 2012), pp. 86–149.
  8. ↑ According to Volker Klimpel: Ärzte-Tode (2005), he joined the USPD in 1922 and the KPD in 1929.
  9. ↑ Uwe-Karsten Heye : The Benjamin. A German family. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-351-03562-4 , p. 37.
  10. ↑ Marianne Brentzel : Die Machtfrau: Hilde Benjamin 1902-1989. , Links, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-139-9 , p. 78.
  11. ^ Leonore Ansorg: Political prisoners in the National Socialist penal system: the Brandenburg-Görden prison . Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-86331-246-6 , pp. 152-165 .
  12. ^ Administration of the Brandenburg-Görden prison (ed.): Prisoner personnel file Georg Benjamin . Brandenburg State Main Archives, Potsdam.
  13. ^ Marianne Brentzel: Die Machtfrau Hilde Benjamin 1902–1989. Links, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-86153-139-9 , pp. 284 ff., Books.google.de ;
  14. ↑ Hilde Benjamin: Georg Benjamin. A biography . Hirzel Verlag, Leipzig 1987, p. 60 u. Pictures 62 and 63 .
  15. ↑ Alexandra Kleinlercher: Between Truth and Poetry: Anti-Semitism and National Socialism in Heimito von Doderer . Böhlau, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78605-4 , p. 95, books.google.de
  16. ^ Howard Eiland, Michael W. Jennings: Walter Benjamin. A critical life . Harvard University Press, London / Cambridge MA 2014, p. 12-20 .
  17. ↑ Bernd-Peter Lange: 1942. Chess Cashier. In: Friday . Issue 35/15, August 27, 2015, p. 12.
  18. ↑ Jörn Schütrump: Michael Benjamin (1932-2000) , obituary in: Utopie Kreativ , Issue 119, September 2000, Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung
  19. ↑ Eva Schöck-Quinteros : Dora Benjamin: "... because I hope to be able to work in America after the war." Stations of an expelled scientist (1901–1946). In: Barriers and Careers. The beginnings of women's studies in Germany. Berlin 2000, pp. 71-102.
  20. ↑ Eva Schöck-Quinteros: “Child labor is a cultural disgrace”. Dora Benjamin (1901 Berlin 1946 Zurich). In: translucent impact , 04/2001
  21. ↑ Ursula Schröter: Nothing is forgotten. The victims of fascism from liberation to division . In: Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt (ed.): The Wedding - hard on the border. Living on in Berlin after the war . Nishen, Berlin 1987, p. 155 .
  22. ↑ Rudolf Klußmann: Psychosomatic Medicine: An Overview . Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 1992, p. 464
  23. ↑ Rehabilitation center Erlabrunn Erzgebirge: site of medical and vocational rehabilitation , 16-page brochure of the rehabilitation center for vocational training at the miners' hospital “Dr. Georg Benjamin “, Erlabrunn 1963
personal data
SURNAME Benjamin, Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pediatrician and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1942
Place of death Mauthausen concentration camp