Gerhard Buhtz

Buhtz (third on the left) shows Allied officers prisoner-of-war in Katyn the results of the exhumation (1943)

Presentation of the report of the international medical commission to the Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti in Berlin. Buhtz as a guest (in the background in the center in uniform, May 4, 1943).

Gerhard Buhtz (born February 24, 1896 in Schönebeck (Elbe) ; † June 26, 1944 near Minsk ) was a German forensic doctor and university professor.

Life

Gerhard Buhtz was the son of the teacher Ernst Buhtz. He finished his school career in August 1914 at a grammar school in Brandenburg an der Havel with the Abitur . He studied medicine and law . His medical studies were interrupted by the First World War, in which Buhtz participated as a war volunteer . At the end of the war he was a court and training officer. After the war he resumed his studies and finished it in 1923 at the University of Greifswald .

With his dissertation The concept of the consequences of accidents according to the decisions of the Reich Insurance Office with special consideration of the so-called. He received his doctorate in Greifswald for accident neuroses and their assessment in the German social insurance system . After his medical internship and specialist training, he became a specialist in psychiatry from 1926 and a student of forensic doctor Willy Vorkastner in Greifswald . Then he went to Martin Nippe in Königsberg . On November 1, 1928, Buhtz became assistant to the Austrian Walter Schwarzacher , who was director at the Institute for Forensic Medicine , in Heidelberg . On November 14, 1931, he was metal traces in bullet wounds habilitation .

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , Buhtz became a member of the SS in April 1933 (membership number 100.376) and served in the 32nd SS standard "Baden" in Heidelberg . In the SS he rose to become SS Standartenführer . He was a member of the Nazi lecturers' association and appeared as a speaker in the Nazi legal guardian association . On May 1, 1933, Buhtz became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 3.171.323).

Buhtz got a teaching position in Heidelberg on January 29, 1934, but already on April 1, 1935 he went to Jena , where he succeeded Ernst Giese as "personal professor and director of the Institute for Forensic Medicine" . Buhtz was also the branch manager of the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) in Jena. He stayed in Jena until 1938, where he was Dean of the Medical Faculty for many years from the end of 1935 . In July 1938 Buhtz accepted a call to the University of Breslau .

During his time in Heidelberg he was later described as a “fanatical representative of the party [NSDAP] at the university” and “one of the most ardent advocates of National Socialism at the University of Heidelberg”. The participants of the 29th meeting of the German Society for Forensic, Social Medicine and Criminology in Innsbruck from May 15 to 17, 1940 - including u. a. the then State Secretary Roland Freisler - greeted Buhtz with the words:

“During our conference, the German Wehrmacht waged decisive blows against our oppressors England , France and their satellites with concentrated strength and impetuous advancement in the liberation struggle of the German people under brilliant political and military leadership , which made the whole world sit up and take notice. We are firmly confident that these heavy battles will finally give our weapons victory and the German people, after long years of servitude, freedom and living space . We greet the German armed forces, we greet their highest commander, our Führer Adolf Hitler , with a triple victory Heil ! "

In Jena, Buhtz prepared “medical certificates” for prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp who were shot “on the run”. Buhtz also carried out autopsies on the corpses of prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp. On May 14, 1938, in the presence of SS camp doctor Werner Kirchert, Buhtz autopsied the 22-year-old SS Rottenführer Albert Kallweit, who was employed in the Buchenwald concentration camp and who had been slain by two escaping prisoners. Buhtz separated the head from the body of the corpse in order to be able to examine it further in the institute of the university. The communication of this procedure led to a fit of rage from Heinrich Himmler and ultimately to Buhtz's transfer to the University of Breslau. Werner Gerlach , professor of pathology in Jena, got the order from Berlin for a guideline on how SS members were to be autopsied "respectfully", and the Jena pathologists also took over from the forensic doctors in the autopsy of the concentration camp inmates.

In 1937 the Society for Forensic and Social Medicine chose Buhtz as its chairman. However, he had to resign from this office in 1940 after a dispute with Reichsärzteführer Leonardo Conti . The reason for the dispute were different views on the distribution of tasks and competencies between the health authorities and forensic doctors at the universities.

During the German-Soviet War , Buhtz was appointed advisory forensic doctor of the VI at the end of August 1941 . Army , Army Group Center appointed. There he was supposed to help clear up Bolshevik atrocities in the Baltic States . He worked as a senior staff doctor in a medical unit. From March 29 to June 30, 1943, he led the exhumations and autopsies of Poles murdered in the Katyn massacre and wrote a 56-page forensic medical report. A delegation of the Polish Red Cross (from April 10th) and an international medical commission (from April 29th) autopsied from Buhtz 'team already exhumed and other corpses. The Federal Foreign Office published their final reports on May 4, 1943 as official material on the Katyn mass murder .

On June 26, 1944, Buhtz had a fatal accident while loading his unit's instruments in the Minsk area. In Minsk he headed an institute with four doctors and two chemists. According to official reports, Buhtz was run over by a train. He was buried near Maladseschna . There are contradicting statements about the cause of death.

Publications (selection)

The traffic accident. Forensic criminal assessment with special consideration of the influence of alcohol Verlag Ferdinand Enke, Stuttgart, 1938.
Manual of biological working methods . Urban & Schwarzenberg publishing house, 1934.
Methods of forensic medicine and forensics. Urban & Schwarzenberg publishing house, 1934
Documents (especially suicide letters), their significance under insurance law. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine 33, 1940, pp. 185-194. doi : 10.1007 / BF01771139
The concept of accident and industrial accident. Greifswald, 1923.
The concept of the consequences of an accident with special consideration of the accident neuroses. Greifswald, 1923.
Legislation and supreme court case law in accident matters spec. in neuroses. Greifswald, 1926.
The importance of hand guidance and support in handwritten wills. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine 17, 1931. doi : 10.1007 / BF02252066
Blood contamination and rust formation. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine
Metal traces in bullet wounds. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine 18, 1932. doi : 10.1007 / BF01746891
Murder by drowning. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine 18, 1932. doi : 10.1007 / BF01746884
The importance of pathological changes in writing for the detection of forged wills. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine 18, 1932. doi : 10.1007 / BF01746870

literature

Jan von Flocken : Katyn - Stalin's monstrous state crime In: Die Welt , February 5, 2008
Katyn - a crime of the Soviets . In: Der Spiegel . No. 1 , 1952, pp. 17 ( online ).
Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Voltmedia, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 3-938478-57-8 .
J. Karger: On the death of Gerhard Buhtz. In: Information from the German Society for Forensic Medicine 45, 1996, pp. 452–454.
Christian Bode: On the history of forensic medicine at the University of Jena from 1901 to 1945 , dissertation from the Medical Faculty of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, July 2007 (PDF file; 4.31 MB)
Thomas Urban : Katyn 1940. History of a crime Munich: CH Beck, 2015

Web links

Individual evidence

^ ^A ^b Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Militzke, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-86189-249-9 , pp. 158-159.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h R. D. Hofheinz: 6.13 Forensic Medicine. In: The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism Springer Verlag, 2006, pp. 997-1030. doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-39385-6_35
↑ C. Schreiber: Elite in secret. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, ISBN 3-486-58543-6 , p. 267.
^ W. Buchholz (editor): The University of Greifswald and the German university landscape in the 19th and 20th centuries. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-515-08475-4 , p. 259.
^ WU Eckart: 6.12 Pathology. In: The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism Springer Verlag, 2006, p. 979. doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-39385-6_35
^ G. Buhtz: Negotiations of the German Society for Judicial, Social Medicine and Criminology at the 29th meeting in Innsbruck from May 15 to 17, 1940. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine 34, 1940, pp. 1-7. doi : 10.1007 / BF01793793
^ Zimmermann, Susanne; Zimmermann, Thomas: the medical faculty of the University of Jena in the "Third Reich" - an overview, in: Hoßfeld, Uwe; John, Jürgen; Lemuth, Oliver; Stutz, Rüdiger (Ed.): Combative Science: Studies at the University of Jena in National Socialism, Cologne: Böhlau, 2003, p. 375.
↑ Christian Bode, On the history of forensic medicine at the University of Jena
↑ Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2015, pp. 174–177, 188 f., 214–216
↑ Hans Joachim Mallach : Forensic medicine in Breslau (1911 to 1945). (pdf) In: Arch Med Sad Krym 47. 1997, p. 131 , archived from the original on October 24, 2014 ; Retrieved October 24, 2014 .

personal data
SURNAME	Buhtz, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German forensic doctor and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH	February 24, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH	Schönebeck (Elbe)
DATE OF DEATH	June 26, 1944
Place of death	near Minsk

[Herber158f-1] A ^b Friedrich Herber: Forensic medicine under the swastika. Militzke, Leipzig 2002, ISBN 3-86189-249-9 , pp. 158-159.

[hofheinz-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h R. D. Hofheinz: 6.13 Forensic Medicine. In: The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism Springer Verlag, 2006, pp. 997-1030. doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-39385-6_35

[3] C. Schreiber: Elite in secret. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2008, ISBN 3-486-58543-6 , p. 267.

[4] W. Buchholz (editor): The University of Greifswald and the German university landscape in the 19th and 20th centuries. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-515-08475-4 , p. 259.

[5] WU Eckart: 6.12 Pathology. In: The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism Springer Verlag, 2006, p. 979. doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-540-39385-6_35

[6] G. Buhtz: Negotiations of the German Society for Judicial, Social Medicine and Criminology at the 29th meeting in Innsbruck from May 15 to 17, 1940. In: International Journal of Legal Medicine 34, 1940, pp. 1-7. doi : 10.1007 / BF01793793

[7] Zimmermann, Susanne; Zimmermann, Thomas: the medical faculty of the University of Jena in the "Third Reich" - an overview, in: Hoßfeld, Uwe; John, Jürgen; Lemuth, Oliver; Stutz, Rüdiger (Ed.): Combative Science: Studies at the University of Jena in National Socialism, Cologne: Böhlau, 2003, p. 375.

[8] Christian Bode, On the history of forensic medicine at the University of Jena

[9] Claudia Weber : War of the perpetrators , Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 2015, pp. 174–177, 188 f., 214–216

[10] Hans Joachim Mallach : Forensic medicine in Breslau (1911 to 1945). (pdf) In: Arch Med Sad Krym 47. 1997, p. 131 , archived from the original on October 24, 2014 ; Retrieved October 24, 2014 .