Hans Czermak (Gauamtsleiter)

Hans Czermak (born April 21, 1892 in Graz , † April 30, 1975 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian specialist in ear, nose and throat diseases and district manager for public health of the Reichsstatthalterei Tirol-Vorarlberg .

Life

Czermak came from an Austrian academic family ; his grandfather was the psychiatrist ("mad doctor") Joseph Czermak and had made a living with the introduction of occupational therapy for mentally ill people, his father the university professor of physics Paul Czermak .

Czermak came to Innsbruck in 1898 at the age of six, where he attended elementary school and the first four classes of grammar school, he attended the upper level of grammar school in Graz. In 1910 he began studying medicine at the University of Innsbruck . Here he joined a striking student union, the Kösener Corps Athesia Innsbruck Innsbruck.

Even before the outbreak of the First World War , he volunteered on June 1, 1914 for military training for medical professionals in Prague and finally came to the front in Galicia . In 1916 he fell ill with typhus , after his recovery was given longer study leave and received his doctorate in the same year at the University of Graz . From November 1918 Czermak worked as an assistant doctor at the Anatomical Institute in Graz and in autumn 1919 switched to surgery in Innsbruck. In 1924 he spent a year at the Cantonal Hospital in Aarau , Switzerland, after which he worked for a short time in the oto-laryngeal department of the Innsbruck University Hospital. On January 1, 1925, he settled in the Tyrolean capital as a specialist in ear, nose and throat diseases.

In April 1919 he had married the daughter of a major industrialist from Graz, but the couple divorced in 1928 without children. Shortly after his divorce, he married again in October 1929. Czermak had a son with his divorced wife, who brought a daughter into the marriage and had been a member of the NSDAP since 1932. Not least because of his remarriage, he left the Catholic Church in 1929 and converted to the Protestant faith. After the Nazis came to power , he also left the Protestant church, as Gauleiter Franz Hofer had asked his political leaders to do.

Activity before and in the time of National Socialism

In March 1933 Czermak joined the NSDAP and SA . He took part in the “illegal struggle” “to the best of his ability”. In 1934 he therefore spent a week in the Innsbruck police prison and also had to pay a fine. As an SA brigade doctor he organized the SA medical service and rose to SA standard leader in 1937 . After the " annexation of Austria " to the German Reich , he took over as the new state medical director of Department II b of the Tyrolean governorate. On May 1, 1939 he was appointed Gau Hauptstelleleiter in the Gauamt für Volksgesundheit ( Gau Office for Public Health ), his appointment as Gauamtsleiter took place on November 3, 1941. Czermak was also Gauobmann of the Nazi Medical Association , chairman of the Tyrolean Medical Association and the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. In the spring of 1939 he was promoted to senior government and medical councilor. After the reorganization of the administration at the end of 1939 / beginning of 1940, in addition to his party offices, he took over the management of Department III of the Reichsstatthalterei Tirol-Vorarlberg. This department “people care” with the sub-departments III a (health care) and III b (welfare system) was divided into four departments: Gaujugendamt, Gau care association, supervision of welfare associations and department for family support. The sanatoriums and nursing homes came under the jurisdiction of the Gaufürsorgeverband. Subdivision III a was headed personally by Czermak.

Together with Gauleiter Franz Hofer, Czermak was inaugurated from the outset in the nationwide plans for the killing of "life unworthy of life" ( Action T4 ) and was primarily responsible for carrying out the euthanasia transports from the Tyrol-Vorarlberg district to the Hartheim Nazi killing center . The director of Hartheim, Rudolf Lonauer , had also offered Czermak to set up a similar killing facility in Hall, as this would save transport costs. One year after the end of the “euthanasia program”, Czermak selected a group of 60 patients from Hall and from “ Valduna ” in Rankweil / Vorarlberg, who were assembled on August 31, 1942 for transport to Niedernhart and then murdered.

"Enter temporarily incognito as a senior physician in our Solbad Hall sanatorium and organize the reduction of the number of sick people there, because the institution is full to the brim."

- Hans Czermak in a letter dated April 17, 1945 to Rudolf Lonauer

Post war career

Hans Czermak was arrested on May 10, 1945 by the American secret service CIC and interned in the camps in Ulm, Ludwigsburg and Glasenbach . On June 24, 1947, he was transferred to the regional court prison in Innsbruck. On July 22, 1947, Czermak was taken to the prison of the Linz Regional Court, and was temporarily held in the Suben workhouse . On February 20, 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that the preliminary proceedings against Czermak should not be included in the Linz Hartheim proceedings. With this clarification of the jurisdiction of the People's Court in Innsbruck, Czermak was transferred back to the regional court prison in Innsbruck on July 8, 1948. On July 26, 1949, the indictment was made of “further complicity” in the crimes of assassination and high treason (because of Czermak's illegal activities for the NSDAP in the corporate state).

Czermak himself pleaded not guilty and dismissed any responsibility for the compilation of the transport lists to Hartheim and the murders. However, he himself introduced the Nazi euthanasia expert Friedrich Mennecke and his medical commission to the sanatorium and nursing home in Hall in September 1940 . Mennecke and his staff viewed the medical histories for three days without doing any further examinations. The medical histories of the patients served as the basis for the creation of the transport lists to Hartheim . Czermak was particularly burdened by an exchange of letters with Rudolf Lonauer, the director of the Hartheim euthanasia facility. At the end of the war, Czermak had offered him to enter the Hall as a senior physician incognito. On the other hand, there were experts, such as the former SS doctor Gerhart Harrer and Kofler, who attested Czermak a “[general] brain weakness” and wanted to relieve him of responsibility for his actions.

The court found Czermak guilty of having contributed in a more distant way to the mass murder of the mentally ill healer and welfare worker by “collecting the sick and frail people from the institutions, poor and supply houses and transferring 707 people to Hartheim repeatedly expressly demanded, supported and operated for the purpose of their gassing ”. A particular stress point in the judgment was Czermak's supporting role in the removal of patients from the smaller institutions, poor and supply houses in Innsbruck and Tyrol. In addition, the court took the position that the Nazi euthanasia campaign in Gau Tirol-Vorarlberg could have been stopped if Czermak's attitude had been different. In the judgment of December 1, 1949, an eight-year heavy prison sentence was pronounced with simultaneous financial collapse. On January 23, 1950, Czermak was transferred to the Garsten men's prison in Upper Austria .

As early as March 4, 1950, Czermak's wife submitted a pardon to the Federal President because of her husband's poor health, the family's financial hardship and the hope of Czermak's mother, now 90, to see her son again before she died. Czermak's complicity in the Nazi euthanasia would have been “a very remote one”, her husband was “under the pressure of the circumstances at the time”. Although the chairman of the Innsbruck People's Court and a lay judge approved the request, it was rejected. On June 21, 1950, however, the court agreed to a renewed petition for clemency after the public prosecutor had taken a positive stance. This procedure was justified with the consideration of the elderly mother, Czermak's state of health and a statement from the Tyrolean Security Directorate. According to the Federal Police , Czermak was credited with the fact that he had significantly weakened the Nazi euthanasia by speaking to the Gauleiter, that he had not behaved hatefully and that his appeal for pardon was generally endorsed by the Innsbruck medical community. This time the release of Czermak failed due to the rejection of the Interior Ministry. But on September 9, 1950, Czermak's persistence was rewarded. Because of good conduct, he was conditionally released from the Garsten men's prison. Three years later, his sentence was considered to have been served.

He then worked for pharmaceutical companies in Carinthia, Vienna and Vorarlberg. At the end of December 1953, he applied for the legal consequences of his conviction to be erased. He wanted to regain the academic title that had been revoked and practice as a doctor again. The Tyrolean Medical Association endorsed Czermak's petition for clemency, and the professors of the university's medical faculty even supported it unanimously. The Innsbruck People's Court could no longer imagine that Hans Czermak would work as a doctor again. After this rejection, Czermak continued to work as an employee at Opanchemie Wolfsberg.

Literature about Hans Czermak

• Horst Schreiber (2008): An “idealist, but not a fanatic”? Dr. Hans Czermak and the Nazi euthanasia in Tyrol. The career of Dr. Hans Czermak . Tiroler Heimat , Volume 72 (2008), pp. 205–224.
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
• Winfried Suss: The "People's Body" in War: Health Policy, Health Conditions and Sick Murder in National Socialist Germany 1939–1945 , Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2003. ISBN 3-486-56719-5 .

Web links

• Horst Schreiber : An “idealist, but not a fanatic”? Dr. Hans Czermak and the Nazi euthanasia in Tyrol

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Horst Schreiber: An “idealist, but not a fanatic”? Dr. Hans Czermak and the Nazi euthanasia in Tyrol
2. ↑ Dr. Hans Czermak  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www.psychiatrische-landschaften.net  
3. ↑ Haller Blatt: Haller Anstaltsfriedhof - Processing of History , April 2011, p. 16.
4. ↑ Quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 99.