Hans Heinze

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Hans Heinze (born October 18, 1895 in Elsterberg ; † February 4, 1983 in Wunstorf ) was a German psychiatrist , professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Berlin and head of the Brandenburg- Görden state hospital as well as a T4 expert on the murders in the involved in Nazi Germany .

Life

Origin and studies

Hans Heinze was born on October 18, 1895, the 13th of a total of 14 children in Elsterberg in Vogtland. He grew up in a Protestant home. He was significantly shaped by the early death of the father and his replacement by a brother ten years older.

Heinze received a vacancy at the Princely and State School Grimma and passed his Abitur in August 1914.

Since he was unable to work in the front during World War I due to an elbow fracture , he performed medical service in an epidemic hospital until November 1918.

An encounter with Hans Berger , the discoverer of the electroencephalogram , should have a decisive effect on Heinze's choice of profession. He studied medicine from 1918 to 1923 in Leipzig , where he also received his doctorate .

Senior physician in the child and adolescent psychiatric clinic in Leipzig

Initially as an assistant to Paul Schröder , who was full professor in Leipzig from 1924, he helped set up the child and adolescent psychiatric clinic as senior physician. How many doctors and psychiatrists was Heinze in his views by 1920 by Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche published magazine "The release of the destruction of life unworthy of life. Their size and shape ”has been significantly influenced. In the center of his scientific interest he placed the endogenous psychoses of childhood, characteriology and genealogical family research.

Head of the child psychiatric department at the Berlin University Clinic and the Potsdam State Hospital

The Berlin University Clinic appointed him head of their child psychiatric department. At the same time, in 1934, Heinze ran the state hospital in Potsdam. This had a capacity of 2,000 patients, including 500 places for children. On October 2, 1939 he became a lecturer in neurology and psychiatry at the medical faculty of the University of Berlin, where he became an adjunct professor on April 6, 1943.

Head of the Brandenburg-Görden State Agency

As early as November 1938, Heinze took over the management of the Görden state institute in the district of the same name in Brandenburg an der Havel . The number of patients here was 2,500, 1,000 of them children.

Since 1939 he has been a member of the board of trustees of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research (KWI f. Hf.) In Berlin-Buch, and asked for the position of brain pathologists Julius Hallervorden and Hugo Spatz in the KWI f. Hf. Hallervorden was with him from April 1937 senior physician in the state sanatorium in Potsdam, to which the central prosecution of the psychiatric institutions in the province of Brandenburg, headed by Hallervorden, had been transferred, and on January 1, 1938, he was appointed head of the neuropathology department at KWI f. Hf. Ordered. In 1937, Spatz succeeded Oskar Vogt as director of the KWI f. In a letter to Spatz dated November 29, 1935, Hf. Hallervorden expressed his enthusiasm about Heinze:

“This man has created a marvelous clinical operation like a university hospital, so it is understandable that we are both magically attracted to each other. This is how the matter came about and with the central location I can hope to get my laboratory going in a completely different way than was previously possible ”.

When he joined the KWI f. Hallervorden retained his position as the prosector of the Brandenburg State Psychiatric Institutions. However, the prosecution (although still financed by the Provincial Association) was officially transferred to the KWI f. Published in Berlin-Buch. The laboratory located in the state institute in Potsdam was henceforth a branch of the institute. When it moved to the Brandenburg-Görden state institute in 1938, which soon became a focus of the “euthanasia” campaign under the direction of Heinze, the branch of the KWI f. Hf. There on the most important link between homicide and brain research in Berlin. At the suggestion of the new director of the KWI f. Hf. Hugo Spatz, Heinze became an expert in research on dementia in childhood and advisor to the Department of Histopathology at the KWI f. Hf. Ordered.

In the "Reich Committee for the Scientific Recording of Hereditary and Constitutional Serious Ailments"

In mid-1939, Heinze was accepted into the "Reich Committee for the Scientific Assessment of Hereditary and Constitutional Serious Ailments" due to his positive attitude towards the "euthanasia" concept of the National Socialists, which initiated the child "euthanasia" as a cover organization of the Fiihrer's office and should control how it should be carried out on the basis of a decision by Hitler. He was therefore directly involved in the preparation and organizational planning of the killing of disabled children from the start.

Expert for children's "euthanasia"

With the start of child “euthanasia” at the end of 1939, Heinze became one of the three experts who had to decide on the basis of registration forms about the admission of mentally and physically severely disabled children to so-called “ children's departments ”. In these special departments of selected hospitals and institutions, most of the children were killed after a clinical examination. Hans Hefelmann , in charge of organizing child “euthanasia” in the Führer’s office, testified

"That Professor Heinze and Dr. Wentzler [...] with enthusiasm and Professor Catel out of conviction affirmed the euthanasia and therefore made himself available as an expert without any compulsion. "

Heinze, who joined the NSDAP in May 1933 and was a member of the Racial Political Office of the Kurmark Gau, commented on his political position after the war:

“I was absolutely positive about National Socialism in the belief that only rescue would come from the chaos we were facing, especially during the Leipzig period, when we were closest to communism in Saxony . And so I stayed true to this idealism until the end. With a view to the activity, I then went to a racial political office, which interests me very much, to be able to stand up for families with many children, etc. and to provide assistance on how things were going at all. And that's how I became known in Berlin, that's for sure. "

The head of the Nazi killing centers in Brandenburg and Bernburg , Irmfried Eberl , attested Heinze an “absolutely positive” attitude towards “euthanasia” in the National Socialist sense. And Dietrich Allers , the managing director of the T4 headquarters, described him in a letter to Irmfried Eberl on June 13, 1941, "as reliable in every respect".

On March 25, 1942, Heinze received the Loyalty Service Medal of Honor 2nd Class from Adolf Hitler and on May 1, 1942, the War Merit Cross, 2nd Class.

The first "children's department"

The first of around 30 to 40 of these “children's departments” was set up in October 1939 in Heinzes Landesanstalt Brandenburg-Görden. The department with 60 to 80 beds was generously equipped and received the status of a “Reichsschulstation”. Here doctors were trained who were intended to be heads of other “children's departments”.

Before the opening of the "Children's Ward" in May and June 1940 232 children referred from Gorden in the "Landscape Management Institute Brandenburg aH" were Nazi killing center housed and gassed there to make way for the planned from summer 1940 recording of "National Committee" -children from the entire To create imperial territory.

Heinrich Bunke , who worked as a gassing doctor in the Brandenburg killing center in 1940 , explained in a statement on April 16, 1962 before the investigating judge of the Frankfurt am Main regional court the background to the killing of 33 children who were gassed on October 28, 1940:

“In Brandenburg, children between the ages of around 8 and 13, or up to 14 years of age, were also gassed. These are children who were brought to us by Prof. Heinze from Görden - either directly or through an intermediate institution - I don't remember exactly - to be killed. During the time I worked in Brandenburg, there were probably around 100 children. The patient's medical history and the documents with the experts' decisions were also sent along with the patients. From the expert decisions on the files, one could see from which intermediate institutions the sick came. The course of the illness and the dispensing institutions could also be taken from the medical files themselves. Most of the time, however, there was no time to study the files. In the children's cases, detailed examinations and medical history summaries were included in the medical record. These were the only cases where it could be said that they were examined as one should have expected in all cases. I mean to say that in these cases even a non-psychiatrist had the opportunity to recognize the considerations which were decisive for the expert's decision. In all other cases, only the result of the decision, but not the reason for it, could be seen, apart from a general psychiatric diagnosis. Some of the children's corpses were dissected by Prof. Hallervorden from Berlin (histologist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute) and taken away for scientific analysis. I assume that this was due to an agreement with Prof. Heinze. I do not know whether Prof. Heinze also carried out killings himself in Görden. In any case, the aforementioned children came from his institution. I think there were 2 transports in total. Prof. Heinze himself was in Brandenburg at the time. "

A last transport with 56 children took place on October 28, 1940. Heinze and Hallervorden were involved in the dissection of these children's corpses at the killing center. About 40 brains from these victims were in Hallervorden's collection of over 600 brains from "euthanasia" victims, which Hallervorden held after the end of the war in an unbroken career as department head of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research (successor to the KWI f. Hf.) Pour continued to use. It was not until 1990 that his collection was buried in the Munich forest cemetery.

Expert at "Aktion T4"

From November 17, 1939, Heinze was also listed as an expert for adult “euthanasia”, known as “ Aktion T4 ”. He was one of the first reviewers ever to be appointed for this purpose. Heinze later stated that he only understood euthanasia to mean the relief of those affected from incurable suffering and that he always attached importance to the agreement of the experts involved. The mishaps in the implementation of "Operation T4" (delivery of death certificates from different senders, obviously incorrect causes of death and the like) as well as the impossibility of a differential diagnostic decision as the last choice because of psychiatrically inexperienced doctors in the killing centers induced him in 1940 to quit his expert work and also to be discontinued from 1941.

In addition to the T4 protagonists Max de Crinis and Carl Schneider , the Nazi homicide doctors and the T4 experts - among them Heinze - were involved in the formulation of a euthanasia law requested by Reich Justice Minister Franz Gürtner and the head of the Reich Chancellery Hans Heinrich Lammers . The last draft of the law was dated August 31, 1940 and is lost. There was no publication due to Hitler's negative attitude.

Brandenburg-Görden research department

In a conference at the beginning of 1941 with the Reichsdozentenführer Walter Schultze , a research plan was drawn up that was supposed to establish a connection between planned mass examinations in 14 anatomical institutes and "euthanasia". This large-scale plan could not be implemented due to the development of the war. However, from 1942 onwards, two research departments were set up by the T4 headquarters, where the brains of "euthanasia" victims were to be scientifically evaluated. In addition to a research department in the Wiesloch sanatorium as a branch of the Heidelberg University Clinic under the direction of Carl Schneider, Heinze was head of the second department in his Brandenburg-Görden state institution from January 1942. The focus of his research was the "abnormal character". On the basis of brain anatomical examinations, correlations between psychological deviations from norms and scientifically objectifiable changes in the brain should be investigated. Heinze was concerned with a systematic classification and description of diseases ( nosology ). For a practical application, he also examined the “training ability of deep-seated imbeciles” in a “life school”, in which children who were not able to learn to read and write, but whose practical skills were sufficient to carry out simple manual activities, became unskilled workers were trained, as Heinze announced in a letter dated April 15, 1941 Viktor Brack (Head of Office II of the Fuehrer's Chancellery and key organizer of the T4 campaign).

Another focus of the Gördener Anstalt was the differential diagnostic distinction between congenital feeble-minded and dementia forms and their systematic classification. This was done in three steps: clinical observation - killing - brain anatomical examination. In some cases, Heinze also tried a scarlet fever vaccine on children in his department. Six children with epilepsy from the research and observation station were abused for a negative pressure experiment in the negative pressure chamber of the aeronautical medical research institute of the Reich Aviation Ministry under Hubertus Strughold in Berlin.

A report by Heinzes dated September 9, 1942 about the previous activities of the observation and research department at the Görden state institute resulted in the expansion of the research program to the field of nervous diseases and thus to the cross-connections to KWI f. Hf .:

“In addition to epileptics and idiots, at the suggestion of Director Dr. Heinze in the observation and research department also examined several sick people who suffered from less common illnesses or organically brain sufferers who, with regard to their social fate, are of interest to the Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft Heil- und Pflegeanstalten. It was primarily athetoses . These investigations were primarily aimed at the question of the surviving, more or less changed or destroyed personality. The resulting practical consequences with regard to the euthanasia problem were discussed in detail and should be presented in detail in a separate report by the Reich Working Group on Hospitals and Nursing Agencies. Of course, as in these special cases, in the work of the observation and research department, the problems connected with the question of euthanasia were always carefully considered and, for the given reason, in several cases, detailed reports on individual patients were submitted to the Reich Committee for the registration of severe hereditary and genetic disorders

Suffering reimbursed. […] In all of these examinations, the possibility of extensive differential diagnostic clarification between congenital and acquired ailments will always have to be in mind. For the rest, however, in the work of the observation and research department it must always be taken into account that its main task is

1. to clarify the question of euthanasia in individual cases or in certain groups of diseases (e.g. athetoses), and

2. to ensure that during the later anatomical examination of the brains the clinical findings are available in the necessary detail for comparison with the anatomical result. "

For the first time, patients with athetosis (a clinical picture in various diseases with incessant, unwanted, slow, bizarre movements of the extremities of the limbs) were also targeted by the “euthanasia” organizers. The cross-connection between Heinzes Landesanstalt, the research department there and the KWI f. Hf. Thus also had an effect on the expansion of the selection criteria for the “euthanasia” campaign.

Fight against the community incapable

Heinze also spoke up in the fight against the unfit for community , pointing out the “necessity of youth psychiatric cooperation in the welfare process” and justifying this in hereditary biology. Be it

“An indispensable National Socialist demand to place the value determination of every single pupil and sick person at the beginning of our actions individually and according to kin. As early as 1937, z. For example, an article in the Black Corps ("Stiefkinder der Nation", volume 19 of May 13, 1937, p. 6) called for a clean separation between the pupils who were valuable and worthless for the national community . […] In my opinion, not only the detection of hereditary diseases, but also the early detection of congenital anti- sociality on the basis of hereditary character abnormalities is best ensured by adolescent psychiatric observation in a professionally managed reception department. Such a developed youth psychiatric collaboration in welfare education will, above all, help to save unnecessary costs, to avoid unnecessary educational attempts on the unsuitable object and thus to save educational disappointments, to weed out those in need of institutional education and those who were immoral due to considerable mental and spiritual rules in accordance with § 73 RJWG to stamp out in time. […] In my opinion, such difficult-to-educate, recidivist criminal youths belong neither in sanatoriums and nursing homes, nor in educational institutions, where they only disturb the healing of the sick and the educational work of those who are still educable. They are much better housed in special, strictly disciplined, but in any case continuously supervised youth psychiatric camps, in which much stricter measures can be applied than the sanatoriums and nursing homes or the educational institutions allow. "

In the Handbook of Hereditary Diseases , edited by Arthur Julius Gütt with the assistance of Heinze, he outlined the group of “community strangers” labeled as “psychopathic” , with reference to the racial hygienist Ernst Rüdin :

According to Linden, prostitution, vagrancy and professional criminality are, without exception, such conditions of behavior which justify the assumption of unfit for marriage. The commentary mentions pimping and so-called pauperism from an endogenous cause. According to Rüdin, all pschopathic punished, so-called born criminals and enemies of society, the swindlers, fraudsters, impostors and peasant catchers, the hysterical Canaillas, the proven unfounded and thus antisocial psychopaths, the grossly poor, among them above all the psychopaths are to be regarded as unfit for marriage serious, incorrigible investment criminals, plus the inveterate prostitutes, the pimps, the incorrigible and inveterate homosexuals and the incorrigible work-shy. "

For all "asocial and recidivist criminal psychopaths whose hereditary character abnormalities can be read in the clan image" he called for compulsory sterilization. For the time after the war, Heinze hoped that "the fight against or extermination of subhumanity through purposeful measures will be worthy of the others that have already been accomplished."

After the war

Even after the war ended , Heinze stayed in his institution in Brandenburg-Görden. Russian specialists were interested in his research on the problem of pre-, peri- or postnatal idiocy . He turned down an offer from a Russian general doctor on October 15, 1945 to take over a facility in Crimea in order to help his family in need. On the same night he was arrested by the NKVD as a "propagandist" and sent to the Soviet special camp No. 7 Sachsenhausen .

Conviction by Soviet military justice and imprisonment

In a trial that contradicted the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure , he was sentenced on March 14, 1946 to seven years' imprisonment for crimes against humanity because "as a Prussian official he approved the measures of a fascist government and, as a university professor, he had trained fascists rather than doctors".

Heinze spent his imprisonment in special camp No. 7 Sachsenhausen and in the prisons Alt-Strelitz, Untermaßfeld and finally in Torgau . After serving his sentence, he was released on October 14, 1952 after seven years. During his imprisonment he worked as a camp doctor among his fellow prisoners, for which he received letters of thanks until later.

Following a request from the Hannah Arendt Institute , which was working on a research project on the Soviet military tribunals after the end of World War II , Heinze was fully rehabilitated in 1998 after being examined by the Russian military prosecutor.

The offer of a position as colonel-physician in the People's Police of the GDR or Ordinariate of psychiatry at the University of Jena refused Heinze to return to the end of 1952 to his family in West Germany.

Head of the youth psychiatric clinic Wunstorf

In March 1953, Heinze was employed as an assistant at the Münster- Marienthal state hospital. In April 1954 he was appointed head of the youth psychiatric clinic at the Lower Saxony state hospital in Wunstorf . In the ten years leading up to his retirement, children in the home participated in drug trials as test subjects without their knowledge . Shortly before his retirement he published a study in a medical journal. In 1963, the drug tested received approval for use as an anti-dementia drug . He also worked for the youth psychiatric counseling center of the municipal health department in Hanover .

Preliminary proceedings of the German judiciary

On January 18, 1962, the Hanover public prosecutor's office requested that the preliminary investigation be opened. His lawyer was Kurt Giese , the former head of the Reich Main Office in the Fuehrer's Chancellery (Amt III - Grace Office for Party Affairs) and assessor at the 2nd Senate at Roland Freisler 's People's Court . The health department of the district of Nienburg-Weser certified on September 4, 1962 that Heinze was neither able to interrogate nor negotiate due to his mental state. New reports confirmed this and ruled out any improvement. The preliminary investigation was therefore suspended on December 30, 1964. On the basis of a last official medical report from September 30, 1965, the Hanover Regional Court suspended Heinze on March 4, 1966.

Hans Heinze died at the age of 87 on February 4, 1983 in Wunstorf. The management and staff council of the Lower Saxony state hospital in Wunstorf stated in an obituary notice on February 11, 1983: “We will keep an honorable memory for him.” The hesitation of his former colleagues in Wunstorf to publish the usual obituary notice was pushed aside by instructions from above with the reason , Heinze was properly divorced from the service and was never convicted.

Works

  • Changes in the cerebrospinal fluid and their significance for the conception of the nature of sciatica , Leipzig 1923
  • Childlike characters and their abnormalities , Paul Schröder with explanatory examples from Hans Heinze, Breslau 1931
  • On the Phenomenology of Mind , Berlin 1932
  • The origin and function of the intervillous space , Halle 1933
  • Race and Heritage: A Guide to Race Studies, Heredity and Hereditary Health Care for Use in Elementary and Middle Schools , Halle 1934
  • Circular insanity (manic-depressive): Psychopathological personalities , Handbuch der Erbkrankheiten, edited by Arthur Julius Gütt, Volume 4, edited by Hans Heinze u. a., Thieme, Leipzig 1942
  • A pair of siblings with myoclonus epilepsy , Bonn 1955

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rep.55 C State Institute Gorden, Brandenburg Landeshauptarchiv Potsdam.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Peiffer : “Brain research in the twilight: Examples of seductible science from the time of National Socialism. Jürgen Hallervorden - HJ Scherer - Berthold Osterberg " , Husum 1997, page 22.
  3. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: “ Brain research and the murder of the sick. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research 1937–1945 (PDF; 243 kB) ”, page 20.
  4. ↑ Hefelmann's statement before the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office on August 31, 1960 Ref .: IIIa / SK-K5526, quoted from Ernst Klee: “What they did - what they became” , page 139.
  5. ↑ Manfred Müller-Küppers: " The history of child and adolescent psychiatry with special consideration of the time of National Socialism ", in: Forum of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Issue 2 - 2001.
  6. ↑ File Eberl I / 42, quoted from Ernst Klee: “ What they did - What they became” , page 136.
  7. ^ History of child and adolescent psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961 , Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003, p. 356
  8. ↑ Johannes Donhauser: “The health department under National Socialism. The delusion of the 'healthy folk body' and its fatal consequences ”page 141, note 389
  9. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: " Medicine in the Nazi Era: Brain Research and Murder of the Sick ", in: Deutsches Ärzteblatt 2001; 98: A 1240-1245 [Issue 19]
  10. ↑ Götz Aly : "Aktion T4" , page 155.
  11. ^ Judgment of the Regional Court Frankfurt a. M. of May 23, 1967, Attorney General Frankfurt a. M. Az .: Ks 1/66, quoted from Ernst Klee: “What they did - what they became” , page 116.
  12. ↑ Jürgen Dahlkamp: Low idiots . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 2003, p. 62 ( Online - Dec. 4, 1967 ).
  13. ↑ Heidelberg documents, see Ernst Klee: “ 'Euthanasia'- in the Nazi state” , pages 228/229.
  14. ↑ Ernst Klee: “'Euthanasia' in the Nazi State” , pages 241/242.
  15. ^ Letter from Wentzler dated October 17, 1942 to the "Reichsausschuß", Federal Archives Berlin, NS 11/94, quoted from Hans-Walter Schmuhl: "Hirnforschung und Krankenmord. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research 1937–1945 ” (PDF; 243 kB), page 45, note 148.
  16. ↑ Ute Deichmann , Hans Nachtsheim: "A Human Geneticist under National Socialism, and the Question of Freedom of Science", in: Martin Fortun / Everett Mendelsohn (eds.): The Practices of Human Genetics , Dordrecht 1999, pages 143 to 153.
  17. ↑ Heinze, report on the previous activities of the observation and research department at the State Institute Görden, September 9, 1942, in: Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 96 I / 5, quoted from Hans-Walter Schmuhl: “Hirnforschung und Krankenmord. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research 1937–1945 " (PDF; 243 kB), page 45.
  18. ↑ Hans Heinze: Suggestions for a future room design of youth psychiatric institutions. February 6, 1942, Heidelberg documents, sheet 128 005 ff, quoted from Ernst Klee: 'Euthanasia' in the Nazi state , pages 380/381.
  19. ↑ he is named as co-editor for volume 3
  20. ↑ H. Heinze: Psychopathic personalities. In: Handbuch der Erbkrankheiten , edited by AJ Gütt, Leipzig 1942, Volume 4, Page 286, quoted from Götz Aly u. a. Segregation and death. The clinical execution of the unusable , Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-88022-950-3 , page 35
  21. ↑ H. Heinze: Psychopathic personalities. In: Handbuch der Erbkrankheiten , edited by AJ Gütt, Leipzig 1942, Volume 4, page 274 ff., Quoted from Götz Aly u. a. Segregation and death. The clinical execution of the unusable , Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-88022-950-3 , page 35
  22. ↑ Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum - Special Camp
  23. ↑ Ernst Klee: What they did, what they became: Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews . Fischer Taschenbuch, 1986, ISBN 978-3-596-24364-8 , pp. 136 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  24. ^ "Persecution under the Soviet Star in the Soviet Zone / DDRF" , XV. Bautzen Forum of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Leipzig Office, on May 13 and 14, 2004, ISBN 3-89892-296-0 ( PDF ; 695 kB)
  25. ↑ Daniela Schmidt-Langels, Otto Langels: drug tests: The long suffering after the children's home. In: Spiegel Online . February 2, 2016, accessed July 20, 2016 .
  26. ↑ Ernst Klee: "What they did - What they became" , pages 137/138.
  27. ↑ Asmus Finzen in a speech on the occasion of the unveiling of the memorial plaque for the victims of Nazi euthanasia in the Lower Saxony state hospital in Wunstorf on August 17, 2001 ( Memento from March 16, 2002 in the Internet Archive )
  28. ↑ The German National Library lists this 6-volume manual of Nazi killing medicine only in the Leipzig location, in the former GDR. In the former FRG the specimens were apparently disposed of at the Frankfurt / Main location, at least they are not in the OPAC.
personal data
SURNAME Heinze, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist, appraiser of the National Socialist children's "euthanasia"
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Elsterberg in Vogtland
DATE OF DEATH 4th February 1983
Place of death Wunstorf