Heinrich Gross

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Heinrich Gross (born November 14, 1915 in Vienna ; † December 15, 2005 in Hollabrunn ) was an Austrian doctor who, as head of the "Reich Committee Department" at the Vienna " Euthanasia " Clinic Am Spiegelgrund , abused disabled children for research purposes was involved in her murder . He was able to build his post-war career on the brain collection created during the Nazi era, which he used for 34 scientific papers. He became head of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute created especially for him for research into malformations of the nervous system and the most commissioned forensic psychiatrist in Austria. In this role he met Spiegelgrund survivor Friedrich Zawrel in 1975 , who gave the public the opportunity to learn about Gross' past life. When Werner Vogt accused him of murdering hundreds of children in 1979, Gross brought proceedings against Vogt for defamation. Before the Higher Regional Court of Vienna , it was possible to prove that he was involved in the "euthanasia" murders. However, he could not be prosecuted for this because the prosecution refused to charge him with murder for years and manslaughter was barred. It was not until 1997 that the murder charge was brought. The hearing was supposed to take place on March 21, 2000, but Gross was declared unfit for questioning and the hearing was postponed indefinitely. In August 2005, Erwin Jekelius ' interrogation records from the archives of the Russian military prosecutor's office from 1945 to 1948 emerged, which seriously incriminated Gross, but the public prosecutor's office was no longer active. Gross died that same year.

biography

Youth and education

When Heinrich Gross was born on November 14, 1915, the son of Karl and Petronella Gross, his father had already died. His mother, who ran the family's wool and hosiery business , gave her son to a Catholic boarding school on the outskirts; he graduated from a public high school. At the age of seventeen he joined the Hitler Youth in 1932 , in 1933 also the SA Storm 13/99, and became a squad leader. He graduated from Realgymnasium 14 in 1934 and switched to the now illegal SA-Sturm 21/4 in the same year . In 1935 he was promoted to district training leader, and in May 1936 to Sturmbann training leader. In April 1937 he became Oberscharführer, attended the brigade leader school in 1937/38 and was troop leader of Storm 11/81 from January 1938. In 1979 in the court case against Werner Vogt , he only confessed to his time in the Hitler Youth; When asked about his motivation for joining this, Gross replied:

"I was thrilled, that was the reason."

- Heinrich Gross

After Austria's "annexation" to the German Reich , he submitted a registration application for NSDAP membership and was accepted with membership number 6,335,279 and the symbolic admission date May 1, 1938 - as an "old party member", which was an appreciation of his commitment to National Socialism as a contribution to overthrow the Austro-Fascist corporate state is seen. In addition, from July 1938 he received a scholarship from the Reichsstudentenwerk . In January 1939 he became senior squad leader.

Before December 15, 1939 MD received his doctorate , he married his girlfriend Hilde, with whom he had three children later. On January 2, 1940, he began as a trainee doctor in the Kaiserin-Elisabeth-Spital and from February 1, 1940 as an auxiliary doctor in the Ybbs nursing home , where he witnessed the removal of mentally ill adults as part of a T4 campaign. In 1940 he was awarded the Golden HJ Badge of Honor No. 124.470.

At the Spiegelgrund

On November 18, 1940, Gross began under the medical director Erwin Jekelius and his deputy Margarethe Hübsch (Jekelius was replaced by Ernst Illing in July 1942 ) as an auxiliary doctor at the Spiegelgrund, but soon became a doctor; initially in the “schoolchildren's department” for difficult-to-educate children of the youth welfare institution established on July 24, 1940 in nine pavilions of the hospital complex. Their task was the "observation of psychopathic or inherited children who should be given to the individual institutions for further treatment and education after a two to three month stay". There he tried to discipline children with sadistic, painful measures such as "oral injections". With the establishment of the "Infant Department" in April 1941, which was internally known as the " Reich Committee Department " and the second of its kind in the Greater German Reich, he took over its management. In this "Reichsausschußabteilung", which was located in Pavilion 15, "euthanasia" murders took place until 1945. Often Gross wrote the reports to the Reich Committee. If he made a negative prognosis, it led to the fact that the Reich Committee approved their killing. Once approved, the nursing staff was usually instructed to put poison in the child's food; or the poison was injected, dosed in such a way that the children died in agony not immediately, but for several days, often from pneumonia and other secondary diseases - “because the parents of these children wanted to be given the opportunity to see their children alive “, As Illing stated on October 22, 1945. Gross also handled the correspondence with the children's parents, who were informed of a sudden deterioration in their health before the children died.

In June / July 1941 and January 1942, Gross attended further training courses in Brandenburg an der Havel , where a T4 killing center was located and the first children's department had been set up in the state institution in Görden near Brandenburg under the head of Hans Heinze since 1939 . What exactly he learned there is not known, but the death rate in the “children's department” rose dramatically after his return: While 22 children were killed in the first half of 1941, there were 72 in the second half of the year. The children killed became brains and spinal cords removed and stored for research purposes. In October 1941, Gross got an official apartment for himself and his family on the clinic premises. On November 11, 1941, he was taken over retroactively from February 1, 1940 into the service of the municipal administration of the Reichsgau Vienna, which meant an additional payment in remuneration. In addition, he received a "one-time special allowance" for 1941, which SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann ( Security Service of the Reichsführer SS , SD Headquarters Vienna) obtained for him.

On March 26, 1942, Gross was drafted into the Wehrmacht in Hollabrunn, but was already back at Spiegelgrund on May 5, 1942, as he was made indispensable for the Fuehrer's office (which dealt with "euthanasia") on April 27 . He also carried out his work as an expert in Ybbs and spent several days in the Frischau children's home near Znaim in May 1942 to sift through and select the children housed there.

Under Illing, as the new medical director of Spiegelgrund from July 1, 1942, Gross shared the management of the “baby department” with Marianne Türk . Up to this point in time, 336 children had died in the department under his direction, and in 238 cases he also signed death certificates. With Illing's arrival he began to participate in medical experiments . So the mirror ground were almost all children Pneumoencephalographien made - in many cases by Gross. Illing's research interest was namely the proof that tuberous sclerosis can be diagnosed by pneumoencephalography in living patients. Often the children did not survive the extremely painful examination, in which air was forced into the brain chambers via the spine for an X-ray. Gross and Illing took no account of the health of the little patients, nor was there any medical necessity. Her only interest was in research. In order to substantiate the diagnoses clinically, it was necessary to make brain slices of the deceased patient.

When he gave a presentation to the Vienna Biological Society in November 1942, he gave an example of medical research whose interest was not the patient and his illness, but only the quality of the patient as a case study.

Finally, Gross had to join the Wehrmacht on March 23, 1943 and served as a medical doctor in an infantry division in Russia until he came back wounded and became a training doctor in the hospital on Rosenhügel . In December 1943 he was transferred to Albania , where he fell ill with a kidney disease, which he cured first in Tirana , then in Thessaloniki and on June 5, 1944 was transferred to the Stammersdorf military hospital, from where he was sent home to recover. After that he is said to have been reassigned to the troops. He always protested that he had not worked at Spiegelgrund since he took up service in the Wehrmacht. However, the opposite has been proven. He visited the institute for research on malformations and was on duty at Spiegelgrund during his vacations, as can be seen from various reports signed by him. He was one of those doctors who, from September 25, 1943, "treated" the 14 girls of a larger group of patients transferred from the Alsterdorf institutions - all 14 were killed within three and a half months.

End of war and post-war period

While trying to get to the west bank of the Elbe , Gross was taken prisoner by the Soviets in May 1945 . He came to the Kohtla-Järve internment camp in Estonia and spent the time there with colleagues such as Eduard Pernkopf , who compiled an anatomy atlas based on Nazi victims, and Alfred Gisel , whom he had already known from his lecture at the Vienna Biological Society and vice versa He is said to have said, "I'm kind of scared of coming home." According to another source, he said, "I think I will have trouble when I get home."

After his release on December 27, 1947, Gross returned to Vienna and learned of the trial scheduled for January 8 against the station nurse Anna Katschenka, who had been accused of manslaughter . Knowing that he himself had given her the order to kill the children in many cases, he went into hiding , but was arrested on April 1, 1948 in Köflach . With the advocate of euthanasia Ernst Jahoda as a lawyer, he stood before the judge on March 28 and 29, 1950. However, the charge was not assassination, as with his colleagues, but merely “involvement in the manslaughter of a child”. On the occasion of Anna Katschenka's trial, the judiciary came to the conclusion that insidious murder could not be committed on the mentally ill because they “lacked insight”. It was also lucky for him that he was only charged in one case. The Minister of Justice, Josef Gerö , already urged Illing's proceedings to bring charges immediately and to stop studying the patient files, and so the public prosecutor at Gross was satisfied with one case without carrying out further investigations or the examination of witnesses. Contradictions in his statements about how far he knew about the Reich Committee were also overlooked, and obviously false exonerating statements were not questioned. In the first instance he was sentenced to two years imprisonment only for his assistance in drafting reports. However, since the sentence was exactly the length of his pre-trial detention, he was released on April 1, 1950. In 1951 the judgment was overturned by the Supreme Court because of "internal contradictions in the grounds of the judgment" (the public prosecutor came to the conclusion that the grounds for the judgment did not reveal "that one of the sickness reports duly submitted by the accused would have given rise to euthanasia [...]" ) and subsequently discontinued the proceedings. However, the court rejected a later application for compensation on the grounds that the suspicions could not be refuted.

Career in post-war Austria

Like many other former National Socialists, Gross rehabilitated himself through the Association of Socialist Academics (BSA) and was able to return to the service of the City of Vienna thanks to the connections established there. He completed his training as a specialist in psychiatry and neurology at the Rosenhügel mental hospital , which at the time was under the direction of Erwin Stransky . In 1953 he joined the SPÖ . After completing his training, he returned to the Steinhof (today Otto Wagner Hospital ) in 1955 .

Gross continued his research on children's brains and published 34 papers between 1954 and 1978, the focus of which continued to be "congenital and early acquired high-grade insane states". Some of these publications were made together with Franz Seitelberger , Barbara Uiberrak, Elfriede Kaltenbäck (one of Gross' employees in the neurohistological laboratory, later in the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute), Hans Hoff and others. Life and death dates referring to the Nazi era were generally avoided, the prosecution of the Steinhof was given as the origin of the "material". The work can be divided into three groups:

  • The first group comprises 13 publications from the years 1952 to 1962 on individual cases that appeared to be of great interest or those that were suitable for demonstrating specific questions.
  • Ten publications from the years 1956 to 1978 form the second group, which deal with unspecific morphological abnormalities (e.g. tower skulls ) or with certain clinical pictures. For this purpose, up to 40 cases were documented and (with a single exception) photos were added.
  • The third group consists of eleven statistical studies, each of which was based on a large number of medical histories and brain preparations.

In 1957, Gross became Primarius of the 2nd Psychiatric Department and the Neurohistological Laboratory at Steinhof, in which the brains that had been histologically examined since 1954 and given new protocol numbers were located. In his 1958 work with Elfriede Kaltenbäck and published in the Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift “Intrauterine Cerebral Damage as an Etiological Factor in Congenital, Severe Insanity”, he praised the size of his brain collection without referring to its origin:

“Thanks to our own, larger, anatomically evaluable material that was primarily made available to us by the prosecution of the sanatorium“ Am Steinhof ”(the board of directors, Mrs. Prim. Dr. B. Uiberrak, should also be at this point warmly thanked for this), there is the opportunity to work on various of these questions from the point of view of the neuropathologist [...] So far, 546 brains of patients with the clinical diagnosis of congenital or severe dementia acquired during the first three years of life have been examined ( Idiocy) died with or without neurological deficits. Compared to the brain collections edited by Benda, Malamud and Meyer, our material is the largest and at the same time the most selectable of its kind. "

For his research on children's brains, he was awarded the Theodor Körner Prize in 1959 .

On the advice of Erwin Stransky , he worked as a court expert for neurology and psychiatry from 1960 and examined numerous prominent cases such as the defendants of the so-called Uni-Ferkelei , Günter Brus , Otto Muehl and Oswald Wiener . He became the busiest court expert in Austria and had produced around 12,000 expert opinions by 1978 alone. In addition, he also worked as a pharmaceutical tester. Between 1958 and 1968 alone, he tested 83 different preparations, which often came directly from the animal research laboratory, on more than 100 patients each, including the drug Clozapine , which has serious to fatal side effects , and which he finally used the words “Judging by the type of Only modest therapeutic success was to be expected in advance of the patient's good "lost. At the same time, Gross was the contact person for the judges' association when it came to organizing seminars for the training of judges, and he kept in touch with the university, more precisely with Franz Seitelberger . In addition, Christian Broda's criminal law reform was implemented in the mid-1970s , which led to a significant upgrade in the role of forensic psychiatrist. Broda's advisors were the psychiatrist Willibald Sluga, the two former SS members Gerhart Harrer and Franz Seitelberger, and Heinrich Gross. In 1971 he was involved in the re-election committee for Federal President Franz Jonas .

Failed habilitation

Alfred Gisel, who was convinced of Gross as an excellent doctor and had read his work, proposed him to Hans Hoff for a habilitation , but the latter advised against : “You shouldn't do that to the man. Not because it wouldn't be good, but because everything would be rolled up again. ”Nevertheless, in 1962 Gross tried to do his habilitation with his thesis“ Optic nerve atrophy as a result of tower skull formation ”and chose Hoff as his supervisor. In addition, Gross was scheduled to head the Steinhof Psychiatric Hospital. Walter Spiel intervened through Ella Lingens , who was head of division in the public health section of the Ministry of Social Affairs at the time, against Gross' habilitation: “Gross's habilitation must be prevented, we cannot allow that. When Gross becomes a professor, I will leave the SPÖ. ”- Spiel knew, as in the 1950s and 1960s,“ every student and teacher at the university where Gross’s research material came from. That is in the air among colleagues ”. Hoff finally refused to accept the habilitation, justifying this with the origin of the brains examined. He was also not given the management of the Steinhof hospital. From this point in time at the latest, experts knew about the origin of the brains.

Ludwig Boltzmann Institute

From 1968 he was in charge of the newly founded " Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on Malformations of the Nervous System ", which was located in the Neurohistological Laboratory in Pavilion B at Steinhof.

“As far as can be estimated from world literature, the prosecution of the Psychiatric Hospital of the City of Vienna has the largest material on brains with congenital developmental disorders and damage acquired early. The neuropathological processing and evaluation of this unique material is the first task of the institute in the next few years. "

The board of directors of the Ludwig Boltzmann Society, including Gross' sponsors Alfred Gisel and Hertha Firnberg , knew about his involvement in the Nazi euthanasia; however, no discussion of the origin of the “one-off material” was noted in the minutes of the meeting. Even after evidence of Gross 'joint responsibility for the euthanasia murders was provided in the Gross Vogt trial in March 1981 (see Gross' lawsuit against Werner Vogt ), this only resulted in the "LBI for research into malformations of the nervous system" the “LBI for Clinical Neurobiology” was merged under this name. From this point on, Gross shared management with university professor Kurt Jellinger .

The research work at the LBI and his work as a court expert led to a shift in the focus of Gross 'research interests to forensic-psychiatric questions and "the processing and statistical analysis of a probably unique collective of approx. 4000 criminals (including 500 perpetrators with' non-negligent homicides") ) ”, As can be seen from the 1974 annual report of the Ludwig Boltzmann Society. Together with Gerhart Harrer, he founded the "Working Group for Forensic Psychiatry and Neurology" in 1974 and in 1975 the journal for forensic psychiatry, "Forensia". The group included respected psychiatrists such as Peter Berner , Willibald Sluga , Walter Spiel , Hans Strotzka , the legal scholar and former Nazi public prosecutor Friedrich Nowakowski, and the psychiatry professor Gerhart Harrer.

The Ludwig Boltzmann Society, namely Josef Bandion , suggested Gross in 1975 for an award. Science Minister Hertha Firnberg awarded him the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st Class , which was revoked from him in 2003.

Reunion with Friedrich Zawrel

In his function as forensic psychiatrist, Gross sat across from former Spiegelgrund inmate Friedrich Zawrel on December 27, 1975 . Zawrel had followed Gross' work as a forensic psychiatrist in the newspapers over the years and could not understand “how it was possible that a man with such a past could have such an important position in the judicial system, especially since his past through the trial before People's Court was known ”. Sitting across from him, Zawrel said:

"Believe me, I know people who have committed hundreds of thousands of times more crime than I have, but they are respected people again today, in high positions and such."

Gross did not understand and did not recognize Zawrel. When asked if he had ever been psychiatricized, Zawrel replied:

“Doctor, you have a very bad memory for an academic. [...] Doctor, can you sleep well at all? Have you already forgotten the many dead children from pavilion 15, have you already forgotten the tortured and abused children from pavilion 17? "

With the report that Gross prepared, he advocated keeping Zawrel behind bars forever after his imprisonment in an institution for dangerous recidivists, and underpinned this, among other things, with a report by Illings from 1943. Zawrel resisted by contacting the courier through a cashier . Wolfgang Höllrigl, who interviewed Zawrel, published the full-page article on December 17, 1978, “A prisoner recognized that Austria's busiest forensic psychiatrist was Dr. Gross a Nazi doctor again. A doctor from the Nazi murder clinic ”. Not only the past of Gross was illuminated in it, some judgments made on the basis of his expert opinions from large trials were critically examined.

Lawsuit against Werner Vogt

The members of the Critical Medicine Working Group, including Michael Hubenstorf and Werner Vogt , got involved in the matter. They decided to confront Gross with the allegations on January 20, 1979 at a meeting of the Working Group for Forensic Psychiatry and Neurology, which was held on the subject of "homicides of the mentally ill", and announced their arrival in a leaflet. While around fifty members of the critical physicians were denied access to the conference held in Salzburg at the State Neurological Clinic headed by Gerhart Harrer , Werner Vogt and two other members were able to fight for admission. Vogt demanded a change in the program - Gross should speak about homicides of the mentally ill because he had more experience with it. However, he did not appear, a colleague was supposed to read his lecture. Instead, Vogt was taken away by two state police officers who were on the spot immediately. Gross sued Vogt for defamation and referred to a passage in the leaflet written by Vogt:

"So now Gross, who himself was involved in the killing of hundreds of children, is tackling the homicides of the mentally ill."

Vogt, his defense lawyer Johannes Patzak and the medical historian Michael Hubenstorf researched Gross’s career and analyzed his scientific publications as well as the case files against Illing in 1946 and Gross in 1950. The nurse Anna Katschenka was invited as a witness , but she did not live to see the hearing. When the key witness Friedrich Zawrel began to tell, Judge Bruno Weis cut him off with "that doesn't belong here". In the first instance, on February 22, 1980, Vogt was found guilty, sentenced to a fine of 32,000 schillings and a fine to Gross of 10,000 schillings. The punishment should have a general preventive effect, i.e. deter potential offenders. Vogt appealed.

As a result, 3,600 people sued themselves because they had signed the quote of the phrase for which Vogt was charged on a signature list, including Christine Nöstlinger , Peter Turrini , Dieter Seefranz , Anton Pelinka , Alfred Hrdlicka and Sigi Maron . Gross did not bring proceedings against them. However, in January 1981 he sued the cabaret artists Erwin Steinhauer and Götz Kauffmann , who had parodied him in a cabaret program broadcast on ORF in November 1980 . You were acquitted a year later.

The critical physician and Vogt's lawyer, Johannes Patzak, collected further evidence for the appeal hearing, although some of their paths were blocked; For example, Patzak did not get access to Zawrel's medical records despite authorization from Zawrel. Instead of just judging the files according to formal errors, the presiding judge Peter Hoffmann reopened the evidence procedure. For him it was completely unbelievable that Gross, as senior physician and department head in a homicide clinic, should have been the only one among five doctors who would have been exempt from the task. On March 30, 1981, Vogt was acquitted before the Higher Regional Court in Vienna , which was able to prove the truth of his accusation. It was not a conviction of Gross, but a guilty verdict that was rewarded with applause from the audience. The public prosecutor's office did not charge him with aiding and abetting murder, but found that it would be a matter of manslaughter “in denial of the baseness of the motives” and that it was time barred. This decision was confirmed by the Ministry of Justice in October 1981.

Exclusion from the SPÖ and BSA

At the instigation of the MP Edgar Schranz , Gross was expelled from the SPÖ on April 30, 1981; The Viennese SP state party secretary Rudolf Edlinger also found the findings from the Vogt trial to be sufficient and "unacceptable for the Vienna SPÖ". On September 2, 1981, the arbitration tribunal of the SPÖ regional party organization in Vienna confirmed the exclusion from the party. Gross appealed against it on October 8, 1981; on July 12, 1982 the arbitration tribunal of the federal party executive confirmed the exclusion.

In the Bund Sozialistischer Akademiker, Elisabeth Pittermann and some board colleagues submitted an application for Gross' exclusion on May 20, 1981 and accepted by a majority, but the board of the Austrian Medical Association wanted to wait for the appeal against the party to be excluded before being excluded from the BSA. It was not until May 25, 1988 that the board of the Austrian Medical Association passed the unanimous decision to expel Gross from the BSA.

Continued as a court expert

His retirement as a civil servant doctor at the psychiatric hospital took place in 1981 - taking into account the time at Spiegelgrund - he received a monthly pension of 36,000 schillings and an additional 14,000 schillings from the medical association. He lived in his official apartment until mid-1997.

However, he kept his work for the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute and continued to research the brains of the murdered children of the Spiegelgrund. It was not until 1989 that he had to resign from the management of the institute under pressure from the Ministry of Science.

He also continued his career as a court expert for the independent judiciary, which was due to the fact that the appointment of an expert is a matter for the respective judge. In the three years between Vogt's acquittal and his removal from the list of experts (1984), Gross was commissioned more often than ever before. His fee income between 1980 and 1983 was over a million schillings each year. Although he was no longer registered as a reviewer, he was still appointed. In 1990, he acted as an accompanying expert in the trial against Udo Proksch , which the Standard rated as an embarrassment that could hardly be surpassed in the international press. In 1995 he still collected 595,231 schillings. He made his last report in 1998.

New research and opening of the Stasi archives

With the opening of the Stasi archives in Berlin, which were secret until 1989 , new documents from the Reich Committee emerged. In 1996 , Marianne Enigl drew the historian Wolfgang Neugebauer's attention to a document which proves that Gross did “Reich Committee work” voluntarily in 1944. Illing justified a "one-time special allowance" for the year 1944 - when Gross said he had nothing to do with Spiegelgrund:

“During his military vacation in late summer of this year, when Dr. Türk was first on vacation and then bedridden for several weeks due to illness, for a good month I did a good part of the Reich Committee work in the local clinic to ease my work. "

Wolfgang Neugebauer then filed a complaint against Gross. The public prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Justice were once again not satisfied with the evidence, a “possibly demonstrable participation by Dr. Big in euthanasia acts in 1944 “would nevertheless only be classified as manslaughter and thus barred.

Mathias Dahl submitted his medical history dissertation to the University of Göttingen in 1996 , in which he meticulously processed the 312 medical files that were still available in the Prosektur am Steinhof, the death book of the "Jugendfürsorgeanstalt Am Spiegelgrund" and Gross' research on the brains. This showed for the first time how much Gross was involved in the “child euthanasia” and that for his research he used in particular the body parts of those children in whose murder he was significantly involved.

Murder charges

When Wolfgang Neugebauer filed a complaint against Gross in March 1997, which he based on the findings of Mathias Dahl, the public prosecutor suggested that the proceedings be discontinued. The American television stations ABC , CNN and CBS as well as the British magazine The Sunday Times took up the topic. In a parliamentary debate on June 5, 1997, Elisabeth Pittermann said - "As a doctor, I am ashamed of such a colleague who has so betrayed our ethics, our principles and our oath" - and Erwin Rasinger :

“I cannot accept that Nazi crimes are trivialized in the medical field . In Austria, too, doctors were part of a horrific killing machine that brutally murdered not only those who thought differently, other races, but also the sick and the disabled. ... As a doctor, I do not stand in line to apologize to the many victims and bereaved relatives of the Third Reich, because we doctors have given a lot of help that hundreds of thousands, millions of people died in racial madness and in the wrong fulfillment of duties. I am personally ashamed. "

The Ministry of Justice refused to close the case against Gross. At the end of 1997 criminal proceedings for murder were initiated. Sepp Rieder , then City Councilor for Health and Vice Mayor of Vienna, described Gross as a murderer during a press conference on the symposium “On the History of Nazi Euthanasia in Vienna” in January 1998.

The Innsbruck doctors Reinhard Haller and Walter Rabl were commissioned to provide an expert opinion on the defendant's ability to stand trial. When they finished their visit with him, he told them that he would declare himself unheard of if he had to judge himself. They disregarded his advice and on August 30, 1998 they found him ready for questioning. They explained that forgetfulness alone, which in his case “must be based not only on organic brain weakness, but also on psychogenic mechanisms such as defense or repression”, would not justify an inability to interrogate, because in some cases he could give very precise information about previous events.

Examining magistrate Minou Neundlinger confiscated the remaining medical histories and around 400 specimens that Kurt Jellinger had claimed in 1989 to have been buried. There was clear evidence for a total of nine murders that Gross had committed in the late summer of 1944. The opening of new legal proceedings was delayed until the year 2000. On April 19, 1999, Vienna City Councilor for Health Sepp Rieder said in a profile interview when asked whether he wanted Gross to be tried:

“Yes, because I want a judgment on the matter. One should be very careful with the question of the ability to negotiate. I know that decisions are sometimes made very generously. It took a long time to deal with the matter. A trial is therefore also in the interests of the judiciary so that the impression does not arise that one has waited too long. "

On March 21, 2000, Gross was in the dock, but the hearing was adjourned after 30 minutes due to a new expert report by the psychiatrist Haller and never resumed. Haller attested that the defendant had advanced vascular dementia and pronounced depression . The New York psychiatrist and court expert Peter Stastny stated on the report:

“I cannot explain the circumstances under which the psychiatric report was made and - above all - why it was accepted as conclusive by the court. […] Conclusions are drawn from the findings - both computed tomography (CT) and tests and observation - which cannot be derived from them. The diagnosis of dementia and severe depression is also based on the CT scans. [...] The second from Dr. Haller's test of cerebral insufficiency is no longer common. The concept of cerebral insufficiency is used neither clinically nor scientifically today. "

Doubts about these assessments quickly arose in public too. Gross nourished these doubts when he gave interviews in a coffee house after the trial , told them about the Second World War and said:

"I don't think they could prove anything to me."

Werner Vogt's comment on the failure of the procedure:

“Heinrich Gross did it. What he has been playing for us for decades, according to expert Haller, happened biologically: He is forgetful. The dementia, according to the clinical dictionary 'acquired dullness', saved him and with it everyone who covered him. No judgement. Austria stays pure. "

Incriminating documents from Moscow

On August 8, 2005, the German documentary film writer Thomas Staehler and the historian Florian M. Beierl filed a criminal complaint against Heinrich Gross "in the case of alleged homicides in 1941" with public prosecutor Michael Klackl at the Vienna Regional Criminal Court . They handed over documents to the Russian military prosecutor's office from 1945 to 1948, in which Heinrich Gross’s superior, Erwin Jekelius , admitted his responsibility for the murder of thousands of disabled people at the Vienna “Steinhof” and, among other things, described in detail which ones According to his orders, Gross had also killed the children at Spiegelgrund. Stähler and Beierl had originally followed tips on the fate of the euthanasia doctor Jekelius and obtained these documents with the help of a legal trick by applying for rehabilitation for the war criminal Jekelius, who was little known at the time . In Moscow, the authorities then lifted the Jekelius file and examined it. In January 2005, Colonel A. A. Stukalov rejected the rehabilitation of Jekelius on the part of the Rehabilitation Administration of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office. As a legal justification, copies of parts of the criminal files and interrogation protocols from 1948 were sent, in which Heinrich Gross's homicides were also found in detail. In addition to the public prosecutor's office, Staehler and Beierl also presented a copy of the material to the documentation archive of the Austrian resistance . The researchers read extracts from the documents at a press conference at the “Am Spiegelgrund” memorial:

“... Lists of the children concerned were compiled and sent to me for immediate execution. I, in turn, sent these lists to Dr. Gross, who then killed the children by administering Luminal . [...] The method for killing children by administering Luminal was developed by Heinze , the director of the “Herd” clinic for the mentally ill in the Brandenburg province . Before his arrival in Vienna, my assistant Dr. Gross completed a practical course on killing children from the aforementioned Heinze. [...] Dr. Gross worked in the clinic under my direction. He killed the children on the basis of his experience and instructions. […] In the practice of our work there have been 2–3 cases of poisoning sick children in which the Luminal dose used was insufficient and did not cause the child to die. After a long sleep, these children woke up and stayed alive. In these cases, Dr. Gross to achieve this goal in consultation with me these children a combined dose of morphine, dial and scupolamium, which led to death after 2-3 hours. […] The killing of sick children was carried out by us in the strictest of secrecy. So the parents didn't know anything about it. After a child was poisoned by Dr. Gross was informed to the parents that their child had died of this or that illness that he made up for himself. As the clinic director, I signed these communications myself. […] As far as the measures to kill sick children were concerned, these were carried out systematically throughout my entire time as clinic director, that is, over the course of a year. We killed between 6 and 10 children every month. ... "

However, there were no further proceedings, Gross died on December 15, 2005.

Awards

For his research on children's brains, he was awarded the Theodor Körner Prize in 1959 ; In 1975 he received the Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class . The Ludwig Boltzmann Society had proposed him; the then Science Minister Hertha Firnberg (SPÖ) presented it. This cross of honor was withdrawn from him by resolution of the Council of Ministers on March 25, 2003.

See also

literature

  • Matthias Dahl: Spiegelgrund terminus. The killing of disabled children during National Socialism using the example of a children's department in Vienna from 1940 to 1945 . Erasmus, 2nd edition, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-9500624-8-3 (revised version of the medical-historical dissertation, submitted to the University of Göttingen, 1996).
  • Johann Gross: Spiegelgrund. Life in Nazi educational institutions . Ueberreuter, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-8000-3769-6 .
  • Waltraud Häupl : The murdered children from Spiegelgrund. Commemorative documentation for the victims of Nazi child euthanasia in Vienna . Böhlau, Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-205-77473-6 .
  • Oliver Lehmann, Traudl Schmidt: In the clutches of Dr. Large. The abused life of Friedrich Zawrel . Czernin, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7076-0115-3 .
  • Wolfgang Neugebauer , Peter Schwarz: The will to walk upright - Disclosure of the role of the BSA in the social integration of former National Socialists . Czernin, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7076-0196-X .

Movies

  • Robert Altenburger, Christoph Feurstein : The children from Spiegelgrund . Documentation. ORF, Vienna 1991.
  • Angelika Schuster, Tristan Sindelgruber: Spiegelgrund . Documentation (71 minutes). oO 2000.
  • Elisabeth Scharang (director): My murderer . Feature film (88 minutes). Wega-Film, Vienna 2005.
  • Elisabeth Scharang, Florian Klenk : My dear republic . Documentation with and about Friedrich Zawrel , who met Gross twice: 1944 Gross as a Spiegelgrund ward doctor, and 1974 Gross as a court expert. Vienna 2006.

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Gross  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Oliver Lehmann, Traudl Schmidt: In the Fangs of Dr. Large. The abused life of Friedrich Zawrel . Czernin Verlag , Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-7076-0115-3 . Page references: parents, school, ranks in the SA and quote: p. 23; Increase in the death rate, service apartment: p. 79; on the lecture on November 23, 1942: p. 81; Post-war period: pp. 104–109; Failed habilitation: pp. 121–122; Encounter with Zawrel: pp. 140–141; Shift in focus to forensic-psychiatric issues including quotation from the LBI annual report: p. 150; Quote from leaflet: p. 159; Self-accusation of the 3,600: p. 161; Steinhauer and Kaufmann, appointment negotiation: pp. 163–165; Exclusion from the party, hesitation by the BSA, continued employment as a court expert: p. 166–; Pension amount: p. 181; commissioned as court expert as often as never before: p. 167 and (last expert opinion) p. 178; Udo Proksch: p. 168; Official residence until 1997, Illings justification for special allowance: p. 176; Prosecution 1997: pp. 177–180, report by Haller / Rabl: pp. 178–179; Vogt quote on the failed procedure: p. 180
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Wolfgang Neugebauer, Peter Schwarz: The will to walk upright . Czernin-Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7076-0196-X , p. 267-295 ( online ).
  3. ↑ a b c d Birgit Koller: The media processing of the victim-perpetrator role in the Second Republic depicted on the basis of the feature film Mein Mörder . 2009 ( PDF ). Increase in the death rate in 1941: p. 69;
  4. ^ A b Mathias Dahl: Spiegelgrund terminus. The killing of disabled children during National Socialism using the example of a children's department in Vienna from 1940 to 1945 . 2nd Edition. Erasmus Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-9500624-8-3 , p. 41 (statement Illing); .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Herwig Czech: Research without scruples. The scientific evaluation of victims of the Nazi psychiatric murders in Vienna . In: Eberhard Gabriel, Wolfgang Neubauer (ed.): On the history of Nazi euthanasia in Vienna: From forced sterilization to murder . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-205-99325-X ( full text PDF - 147–156; quote on brain collection: p. 155; LBI for research into malformations of the nervous system including Gross quote on its task: p. 156). Pages refer to the print version.
  6. ↑ a b Martin Ladstätter: Nazi doctor loses cross of honor, decided the Council of Ministers. In: bizeps.or.at. Biceps Association, March 25, 2003, accessed July 12, 2020 .
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Wolfgang Neugebauer : On dealing with Nazi euthanasia in Vienna after 1945. Lecture on the occasion of the scientific symposium "On the History of Nazi Euthanasia in Vienna", Vienna, January 29th and 30th, 1998. In: doewweb01.doew.at. DÖW , archived from the original on July 30, 2013 ; accessed on April 18, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Höllriegl: A prisoner recognized Austria's busiest forensic psychiatrist Dr. Gross a Nazi doctor again. A doctor from the Nazi murder clinic. Ed .: Courier. December 17, 1978, p. 13 . , shown in Birgit Koller: The media processing of the victim-perpetrator role in the Second Republic depicted on the basis of the feature film Mein Mörder . 2009, p. 251 ( PDF ).
  9. ↑ Arbeiterzeitung (Ed.): Higher Court: Gross involved in killings . March 31, 1981, p. 7 ( online [accessed March 8, 2015]).
  10. ↑ Andreas Novak : A completely normal doctor. ORF, 2000, accessed on April 10, 2015 .
  11. ↑ There must be a judgment . In: Profile . Vienna April 19, 1999, p. 54 .
  12. ↑ Justice adjourned indefinitely. In: dielebenshilfe.at. March 2000, archived from the original on April 15, 2015 ; accessed on January 10, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Large process: gross weaknesses. The New York psychiatrist and court expert Peter Stastny on the start of the major trial. In: Profile , quoted in: Biceps.
  14. ↑ Peter Pisa: ORF interview with “fresh” Gross could have consequences. Courier, March 23, 2000, accessed April 10, 2015 .
  15. ↑ My dear republic. Documentary film with Friedrich Zawrel (2006). Wega Film website .
personal data
SURNAME Gross, Heinrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian doctor and perpetrator of Nazi murders
DATE OF BIRTH November 14, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 2005
Place of death Hollabrunn , Austria