Georg Gerhard Wendt

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Georg Gerhard Wendt (born April 10, 1921 in Rostock , † October 22, 1987 in Marburg ) was a German human geneticist and eugenicist . He initiated the establishment of genetic counseling centers in the Federal Republic of Germany .

Life

Gerhard Wendt attended the large city school in Rostock and from 1940 studied medicine at the universities of Rostock , Würzburg , Berlin and Prague . During the Second World War he was a medical officer in the Air Force . Shortly before the end of the war, he completed the state examination and doctoral procedure at the German University in Prague with the coroner and SS-Obersturmführer Günther Weyrich .

Then Wendt initially worked for some time in the v. Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Bethel and one year at the Forensic Medicine Institute in Münster with Albert Ponsold . In 1948 he received an assistantship in Marburg , where he joined in 1952 as an anatomist habilitation and lecturer was. In 1951, together with Willi Zell, he submitted a study of 474 schizophrenics from Bethel and 500 adult “ racially similar” comparators, with which he refuted the claim that the group of schizophrenics can be distinguished from the group of healthy people on the basis of their papillary ridges . During various guest stays with the geneticist Hans Nachtsheim in Berlin and Tage Kemp in Copenhagen , he oriented himself from anthropology to human genetics and received the Venia legendi for this subject in 1957 .

In 1959, Wendt was appointed professor at the Philipps University of Marburg , where he became full professor and director of a newly established institute for human genetics in 1963 . In 1965 Wendt became secretary in the Marburg University Association . In the mid-1970s he developed a two-year medical training course on "Medical Genetics" and became a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Medical Association at the end of the 1970s .

Founder of genetic counseling in Germany

In 1969, Wendt organized and led a groundbreaking symposium as part of the Forum Philippinum under the motto “Genetics and Society”, which was about the “genetic health and productivity of future generations”. At this symposium, genetic counseling was re-legitimized by emphasizing the well-being of the family and assigning genetic counseling to preventive medicine . Wendt in particular also emphasized the value of advice for the general population. Together with Peter Emil Becker and Hans Wilhelm Jürgens , he developed a research program on “social genetics” that required the expansion of human genetic counseling and examination centers as well as the legalization of sterilizations for eugenic indications. At the same time the model of the genetic counseling center was presented.

Wendt is considered to be the spiritual father of genetic counseling, which was expanded in the Federal Republic of Germany in the first half of the 1970s. On August 10, 1972, he himself opened the first genetic counseling center in the Federal Republic of Germany in Marburg. This advice center was initially intended as a two-year model test and was financed by the Federal Ministry of Health and the Volkswagen Foundation . The advice center should, in cooperation with the statutory health insurance physicians, systematically advise a larger section of the population on questions of hereditary diseases . The target group were parents in whose families hereditary diseases had already been observed. Against the background of statistical studies that found that women between the ages of 40 and 44 were more likely to have a child with Down syndrome , the counseling center turned to women in their 40s who wanted to have children. Wendt had an educational brochure sent to 3500 Hessian general practitioners so that they could send patients to Marburg for free consultation. In addition, more than a hundred thousand copies of an advisory leaflet were distributed. A study was carried out on the effects of public relations and was awarded the Hufeland Prize in 1975 for the best scientific work in the field of preventive medicine .

With the expiry of the model phase, during which 2,173 families were advised, the Marburg University Hospital and the Medical Faculty decided at the end of 1974 to take over the genetic counseling center as a genetic polyclinic in the hospital. With the Marburg model, a low-threshold offer was created that made it possible to advise a large number of patients. In 1977 there were already 41 such advice centers in the Federal Republic of Germany, but not all of them followed Wendt's model.

Reform eugenicist

Like Widukind Lenz , Wendt saw difficulties in differentiating between social and genetic indications in practice when applying for sterilization. He considered a “typical example” to be “a slightly feeble-minded 17-year-old girl from an antisocial family who is sexually instinctive and unstable and already has an illegitimate child. [...] In some such cases, the urgent question then arises whether sterilization should not be carried out for a social or a mixed genetic-social indication ”. In 1974 Wendt therefore called for genetic counseling to be made available to all families. Because the genetic situation of the present is characterized by the elimination of natural selection and the increase in the mutation rate. Therefore, genetic counseling should not only be about hereditary diseases, but also those who are at the lower limit of the norm in terms of their physical or mental capabilities, including "socially poorly adapted" or "asocial extended families". If sufficient counseling centers were not set up immediately, Wendt said in 1975, "those who - like Hans Nachtsheim - would ultimately be right who believe that a compulsory genetic health will have to be just as natural in a few generations as the compulsory vaccination is today" would ultimately be right .

Between 1974 and 1979, Wendt was chairman of the “Foundation for the Disabled Child”, later the “Foundation for the Disabled Child to Promote Prevention and Early Detection”. In this capacity he noted: "The main dilemma of disabled people is that better treatment and care for disabled people increases the life expectancy of these people and thus increases the number of disabled people". He put it: "We behave like a person who is desperately trying to get the water out of his apartment, but who does not think about clogging the defective tap." The aim of the foundation is to "reduce the influx of disabled people . "

At the Marburg Institute in particular, the cost-benefit aspect of genetic counseling was always emphasized. Wendt supervised, for example, the dissertation Problems of Monitoring the Success of Preventive Medicine Programs, presented using the example of an effectiveness and efficiency analysis of genetic counseling by Hans Heinrich von Stackelberg (1980). In it, Stackelberg made a cost-benefit analysis, which assumed that disabled people would tie up capital not only in public institutions but also within the family. Stackelberg came to the conclusion that human genetic counseling as an investment in productive human assets saves costs in the ratio of 1:51. When comparing the costs of genetic counseling and the costs caused by every handicapped child, he came up with a benefit surplus of 3.9 million DM for every handicapped child not born as a result of the counseling. His work was awarded the Health Economics Prize of the Federal Minister for Labor and Social Affairs in 1981.

Wendt's propaganda approach is considered to be singular in West German human genetics; however, Wendt was not isolated in his scientific discipline. On the contrary, specialist colleagues praised Wendt's services to the development of genetic counseling, so that his positions were undisputed during the 1970s. In the 1980s, however, criticism rose rapidly. Critics accused Wendt and other advocates of genetic counseling of continuing the Nazi racial hygiene . Ernst Klee, for example, reckoned Wendt to be part of the “young generation of racial hygienists”. Others assign Wendt to “reform eugenics”. Within the genetic counseling, Wendt's prevention paradigm was gradually replaced by a non-directive counseling model and his concept was rejected as out of date. The institutional structures he designed were nevertheless expanded and further developed.

Publications

  • with W. Zell: Schizophrenia and finger ridge pattern. In: Archive for Psychiatry and Neurology Journal. 186, 1951, pp. 456-463.
  • with Helmut Baitsch (Ed.): Genetics and Society. Marburg Forum Philippinum. Knowledge Verlags-Ges, Stuttgart 1970.
  • with Dorothea Drohm: Huntington's Chorea. A population genetic study. In: PE Ecker et al. (Ed.): Advances in general and clinical human genetics. Volume 4. Thieme, Stuttgart 1972, ISBN 3-13-224401-5 .
  • Heredity and Hereditary Diseases. Your social significance. Herder & Herder, Frankfurt 1974, ISBN 3-585-32108-9 .
  • with Ursel Theile: human genetics and genetic counseling. Introduction to clinical studies. In: Clinic of the Present. Volume 11, pp. 283-356; Study ed. of the Contribution to Human Genetics and Prophylactic Medicine. 1974.
  • with Peter E. Becker (Ed.): Hereditary diseases, risk and prevention . Report on d. Conference on 17th and February 18, 1975 in Marburg ad Lahn. Organizer: Inst. F. Human genetics d. Univ. Marburg, Lahn; German Green Cross Marburg, Lahn; Akad. F. Doctor Advanced training d. State Medical Association of Hesse. Medical publishing company, Marburg 1975.
  • with Ursel Theile (ed.): Genetic advice for practice. 70 hereditary diseases. Clinic, frequency, genetics, advice. Edited by Heiner Cramer… Fischer, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-437-00163-9 .
  • with Peter E. Becker (Ed.): Genetic, obstetric and pediatric prevention. Lectures as part of d. 1st training event d. Foundation for d. Disabled child to promote provision and Early detection. Medical publishing company, Marburg / Lahn 1977.
  • as publisher: Praxis der Vorsorge. A guide from the foundation for disabled children to promote early detection and prevention. Medical publishing company, Marburg 1984, ISBN 3-921320-05-4 .

literature

  • Udo Sierck, Nati Radtke: The Benefactor Mafia. From hereditary health court to human genetic counseling. 4th edition. Mabuse Verlag, Giessen 1988, ISBN 3-925499-30-X .
  • Anne Waldschmidt : The Subject in Human Genetics. Expert discourses on the program and conception of genetic counseling 1945–1990 . Steam boat, Münster 1996, ISBN 3-929586-80-0 .
  • Ernst Klee : German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-10-039310-4 , pp. 271-274.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the entry of Gerhard Wendt's matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945. 2001, p. 272.
  3. ↑ Benoît Massin: Anthropology and human genetics under National Socialism or: How do German scientists write their own history of science? In: Christian Saller, Heidrun Kaupen-Haas (Ed.): Scientific racism. Analysis of a continuity in the human and natural sciences . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, p. 46.
  4. ^ A b Daphne Hahn: Modernization and Biopolitics. Sterilization and termination of pregnancy in Germany after 1945. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2000, p. 163.
  5. ^ Waldschmidt, subject. P. 149.
  6. ↑ https://www.br.de/nachrichten/bayern/als-behinderte-zum-kostenffekt-wurden,RV0wSTI
  7. ↑ Taboo Spoken . In: Der Spiegel. 34/1972, August 14, 1972.
  8. ^ Daphne Hahn: Modernization and Biopolitics. Sterilization and termination of pregnancy in Germany after 1945. Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2000, p. 167 f.
  9. ↑ See Theo Löbsack: Genetic Advice. Exemplary attempt in Marburg . In: The time. March 7, 1975.
  10. ↑ Genetics and Society , Stuttgart 1970, pp. 137f.
  11. ^ A b Jürgen Reyer: Eugenics and pedagogy. Educational Science in a Eugenized Society. Juventa, Weinheim 2003, p. 180f.
  12. ↑ Quoted from Jennifer Hartog: The genetic counseling interview. Institutionalized communication between experts and non-experts . Gunter Narr Verlag, Tübingen 1996, p. 18.
  13. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, p. 274.
  14. ↑ Quoted from Walburga Friday: Contergan. A genealogical study of the connection between scientific discourses and biographical experiences Waxmann, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8309-1503-9 , p. 115.
  15. ↑ Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll, Kurt Bayertz: Race, Blood and Genes - History of Eugenics and Racial Hygiene in Germany . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, p. 676.
  16. ↑ a b Anne Waldschmidt: The subject in human genetics. Expert discourses on the program and conception of genetic counseling 1945–1990 . Dampfboot, Münster 1996, pp. 154–156.
  17. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, p. 272.
personal data
SURNAME Wendt, Georg Gerhard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wendt, Gerhard; Wendt, Gerhard G.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German human geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH April 10, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock
DATE OF DEATH October 22, 1987
Place of death Marburg