Hans Harmsen

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Hans Harmsen (born May 5, 1899 in Berlin-Charlottenburg ; † July 5, 1989 in Bendestorf ) was a German social hygienist and population scientist . Until the end of the Second World War, he practiced eugenics in the service of the National Socialist rulers. After 1945 he became a professor at the University of Hamburg . He was a co-founder, president and eventually honorary president of Pro Familia .

Career

Harmsen attended the Oberrealschule in Berlin-Zehlendorf , but volunteered for the military during the First World War before graduating, where he suffered a serious wound in 1917. From 1919 to 1925 he studied medicine at the universities of Berlin , Marburg and Munich . He passed his preliminary examination in 1921, his final examination in October 1923, in November 1924 he received his license to practice medicine and in the same year he received his doctorate . He then worked briefly as a doctor and then worked with a resident scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation at the Hygienic Institute Berlin. After it expired, he went to the Philipps University of Marburg, where he received his doctorate in economics in 1927 . He then became head of the health care department in the Central Committee for Inner Mission and managing director of the German Evangelical Hospital Association.

In 1928 he married Elisabeth Charlotte Agnes Hedwig von Haeften (1903–1980), sister of the two resistance fighters of July 20, 1944 Werner von Haeften and Hans Bernd von Haeften in Potsdam . In 1931 the daughter Ursula Kadereit was born. From 1931 Harmsen was also a lecturer at the Berlin Institute for Social Ethics.

The social democratic eugenicist Alfred Grotjahn was one of his medical teachers, but Harmsen differed from him early on in his racial hygienic arguments. This also emerges from a statement at the Protestant conference for eugenics on May 18, 1931: “We give the state the right to destroy human life - criminals and in war. Why do we deny him the right to destroy annoying existences? "

Harmsen was not a member of the NSDAP , but held various offices, such as from 1937 the position as head doctor of the professional association for health services and welfare . As head of the “Specialist Conference for Eugenics”, he was involved in the deliberations on the 1934 law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring . Until 1942 he was also managing director of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Volksgesundung . In 1939 Harmsen completed his habilitation at the University of Berlin on the subject of the possibilities and limits of eugenics . He was one of the leading German racial hygienists, but, according to Schleiermacher, he was not ready to go as far as " euthanasia "; he had rejected "eugenically indicated abortion" as well as murder. However, he accepted the racist -related anti-Semitism , in which he saw no contradiction to Christianity.

In 1942 he was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a consultant hygienist and worked in North Africa, the Balkans and a tank division on the Eastern Front . But since he was not a member of the NSDAP, the denazification measures after the end of the Second World War hardly affected him and he was able to continue his career without any problems. He was commissioned by the British occupation forces to found an "Academy for State Medicine". This became part of the Hygiene Institute in Hamburg , whose management Harmsen took over on July 1, 1946 as the successor to Horst Habs . At the same time he became professor for general and social hygiene at the University of Hamburg. In 1952 Hans Harmsen became chairman of the German Society for Population Science and in 1953 President of the German Academy for Population Science . According to the science journalist Ludger Weß , these associations served "as a collecting basin and network of the leading figures in Nazi racial and population biology".

Until April 30, 1969, Harmsen was director of the Hygiene Institute. His main areas of work were social , industrial and urban hygiene , as well as sexual hygiene . In the Soviet occupation zone , his work The Population Policy of Italian Fascism (Population Policy Committee, Berlin 1929) was placed on the list of literature to be segregated.

In 1952 Harmsen was a co-founder of Pro Familia , became its first president and then honorary president. However, he had to resign from this post in 1984 after his publications from before 1945 became known and provoked critical public reactions. He was also a member of the family ministry's scientific advisory board . Since 1958 he was also president of the Ernst Barlach Society Hamburg and collected art. In 1967 he was awarded the Ernst von Bergmann plaque of the German Medical Association , in 1967 with the Hufeland Medal by the Central Association of Doctors for Naturopathic Treatment and in 1980 with the Federal Cross of Merit.

Harmsen published the magazine Forum Umwelthygiene (initially urban hygiene and environmental hygiene ) and the series of publications on the development and organization of the health system in the GDR, taking into account the USSR and the East German people's democracies (1955–1978 / 1979).

Fonts (selection)

  • Work report of the Mütterhilfe e. V. for the year 1935. Berlin, 1936
  • On the unexplained situation of the single mother and the illegitimate child. In: Archive for Population Science 10, 1940, pp. 145–153
  • Training opportunities in the field of demography. In: Hans Freyer , Helmut Klages and Hans Georg Rasch (eds.): Actes du XVIIIe Congrès International de Sociologie, Vol. 4. Nuremberg, 10-17 September 1958. Institute International de Sociologie. 4 volumes. Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain 1961, pp. 131–139.

literature

  • Sabine Schleiermacher: Social ethics in the field of tension between social and racial hygiene. The physician Hans Harmsen in the Central Committee for Internal Medicine. Matthiesen, Husum 1998, ISBN 3-7868-4085-7 .
  • Peter Schneck: Social hygiene and racial hygiene in Berlin: Alfred Grotjahn's students and their fate under the Nazi regime. In: Wolfram Fischer (Hrsg.): Exodus of Sciences from Berlin: Questions - Results - Desiderata; Developments before and after 1933. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1994, ISBN 3-11-013945-6 , pp. 494–509.
  • Rainer Bookhagen: The Protestant child care and the inner mission in the time of National Socialism, mobilization of the communities. Volume 1: 1933 to 1937. Göttingen 1998, ISBN 978-3-525-55729-7 , pp. 558-559 ( online ).
  • Peter Reinicke : Harmsen, Hans , in: Hugo Maier (Ed.): Who is who of social work . Freiburg: Lambertus, 1998 ISBN 3-7841-1036-3 , p. 228f.
  • Atina Grossmann : Reforming sex. The German movement for birth control and abortion reform, 1920–1950. Oxford University Press, New York 1995, ISBN 0-19-505672-8 .
  • Romy Steinmeier: "But Hamburg also had its good sides." Rudolf Otto Neumann and the Hygiene Institute Hamburg (= series of publications by the Institute for Hygiene and Environment, Hamburg, Volume 3). Edition Temmen, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-86108-083-4 , pp. 205-207.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 227.
  2. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 227.
  3. ↑ Romy Steinmeier: "But Hamburg also had its good sides." Rudolf Otto Neumann and the Hygiene Institute Hamburg (= series of publications by the Institute for Hygiene and Environment, Hamburg. Volume 3). Edition Temmen, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-86108-083-4 , pp. 205-207.
  4. ↑ Sabine Schleiermacher: Social ethics in the field of tension between social and racial hygiene ; P. 251 ff.
  5. ↑ Quoted from Sontheimer, see web links.
  6. ↑ http://www.polunbi.de/bibliothek/1948-nslit-h.html
  7. ↑ Background information on President Hans Harmsen on the ProFamilia website (PDF; 250 kB) .
personal data
SURNAME Harmsen, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German social hygienist
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin-Charlottenburg
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1989
Place of death Bendestorf