Gustav Ortmann

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Gustav Ortmann (born January 31, 1904 in Gelsenkirchen , †  July 4, 1979 in Kippenheim ) was a German SS-Obersturmbannführer d. R. (1944) and camp doctor in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as well as senior physician in the inspection of the concentration camps (IKL).

Life

Ortmann put after attending high school in 1922 in Dusseldorf , the High School from. From 1923 he studied medicine at the University of Tübingen and Berlin . In July 1929 he passed the state examination and received his doctorate in 1933 as Dr. med. Ortmann then worked at the Surgical University Clinic in Freiburg until February 1937 and was then medical director at the Hornberg Municipal Hospital from February 1937 to 1939 . In Hornberg he married Esther Howaldt from Kiel.

The NSDAP ( membership number 3460439) came Ortmann at March 1, 1933 and was also a member of the later SS (SS no. 258144). Between the end of November 1939 and the end of January 1940, Ortmann received military training from the reserve battalion D. He was then transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a camp doctor and was also the chief doctor in the inspection of the concentration camps. As a camp doctor he was very different from the other SS doctors, such as a. a communist prisoner reported in his memoirs: “Since April 1940 we have had a new SS camp doctor. It is SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. med. Gustav Ortmann, a calm, reserved person. He doesn't yell or hit. He takes the sick seriously. We also have the impression that he is not exactly looking for intercourse with other SS men. With the block leaders he is considered an outsider. The inmate nurses find an open ear when they make their suggestions for improvements in hospital operations ”. Another inmate of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp made a similar statement on the reminder slips that he - as a clerk in the political department of the camp administration - smuggled out of the camp in a glasses case: "The Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg Concentration Camp is owned by chief physician Dr. Orthmann made a capable, very outstanding doctor from 1939 to 1941, to whom the highest praise can be given ”.

From February 20, 1941 to the end of November 1944, Ortmann was employed as a surgeon in the SS Totenkopf Division and then in the I and II SS Panzer Corps , and at the beginning of December 1944 he switched to refreshment staff 16, where he worked as an advisory surgeon.

After the end of the Second World War he settled in Kippenheim near Lahr . An investigation by the public prosecutor's office in Freiburg against Ortmann was later discontinued. Ortmann was questioned as a witness in various proceedings from 1957 and gave very precise and factual information.

The tin box

In 2000 appeared constancy of Andreas Beck , a volume of short stories under the title "The Tin Box". The cover story is about a topic from his childhood in Hornberg. Therein - with a changed name - Dr. Ortmann is portrayed as a bloodthirsty concentration camp doctor who performed surgical experiments on prisoners and filmed them for his career.

This misrepresentation was the reason for a correction in the yearbook of the Historical Association for Central Baden "The Ortenau" in 2006 under the title "The doctor who was not a murderer". Discreetly, the author did not mention the name of the storyteller of the alleged “tin box”.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Johannes Tuchel : Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934–1938. (= Writings of the Federal Archives, Volume 39). H. Boldt, 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 .
  • Harry Naujoks : My life 1936–1942 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, memories of the former camp elder. Berlin 1989.
  • Andreas Beck : The tin box. Stories from medicine , Clio, Konstanz 2000, ISBN 3-00-006452-4 .
  • Frank Flechtmann: The doctor who wasn't a murderer. Dr. Gustav Ortmann from Hornberg and "Die Blechschachtel". In: Die Ortenau, yearbook of the historical association for central bathing. 86th annual volume, Offenburg 2006, pp. 139–150.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 445.
  2. ↑ a b c Johannes Tuchel: Concentration camps: organizational history and function of the inspection of the concentration camps 1934–1938. 1991, p. 384.
  3. ^ Harry Naujoks: My life 1936–1942 in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, memories of the former camp elder. Berlin 1989, p. 229.
  4. ^ Emil Buge : 1470 Concentration Camp Secrets, Secret Records from the Political Department of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Berlin 2010, p. 202, on this the note on p. 368.
  5. ↑ Frank Flechtmann: The doctor who wasn't a murderer. Dr. Gustav Ortmann from Hornberg and "Die Blechschachtel". In: Die Ortenau, yearbook of the historical association for central bathing. 86th annual volume, Offenburg 2006, p. 146f.
  6. ↑ Andreas Beck: The tin box. Medical narratives. Clio, Constance 2000.
personal data
SURNAME Ortmann, Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German SS doctor
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Gelsenkirchen
DATE OF DEATH 4th July 1979
Place of death Kippenheim