Heinrich Korbsch

Heinrich Georg Korbsch (born March 26, 1893 in Krappitz ; † September 9, 1984 ) was a German psychiatrist and university professor .

Life

Korbsch was the son of a medical councilor. After graduating from high school in 1914, he began studying medicine at the University of Breslau , which he interrupted in 1915 due to his participation in the First World War. After the end of the war he continued his studies in Breslau and passed the state examination there in 1921. After completing his medical internship at the City Hospital in Breslau and the University Psychiatric Clinic there with Robert Wollenberg , he was awarded a doctorate at Kiel University in 1922. med. PhD . He then worked as an assistant doctor under Ernst Siemerling at the Kiel University Neurological Clinic and from 1925 at the University Neurological Clinic in Münster, where he completed his habilitation in 1929 . He then worked at the University of Münster as a private lecturer in psychiatry and neurology and in 1930 became senior physician and deputy clinic director under Ferdinand Adalbert Kehrer .

At the beginning of April 1933 Korbsch became a member of the NSDAP and worked for the party as cell leader and block warden for the local group Münster North-West until 1934. From 1934 he was a member of the SS . From 1934 he was Gauamtsleiter in Gau Westfalen-Nord and worked there from 1935 to 1941 for the Racial Political Office in matters of hereditary health.

In 1935, Korbsch was employed as a senior physician at the Münster-Marienthal institution. In addition, from 1936 he worked as a forensic doctor and expert for the Münster Oberversicherungsamt. From 1939 he worked as an associate professor at the University of Münster. During the Second World War it was indispensable. In November 1944, after the Münster-Marienthal institution was closed, he moved to the Lengerich Clinic.

After the end of the war, Korbsch was suspended from the university office in November 1945 and lost his job in Lengerich in August 1946. In February 1948 he was denazified as exonerated . Pastors, sisters, patients and fellow professors made exonerating declarations for him, for example, that he rejected the euthanasia measures, gave correct medical care to Jews and was only initially a staunch National Socialist. In April 1948 he got a job at the state healing and hospital Gütersloh, whose neurological department he eventually headed. Korbsch successfully returned to college and was able to resume his extraordinary professorship at the University of Münster in 1949, which he held until he left in 1961 due to illness. He was promoted to senior medical officer in 1952.

Korbsch had initially researched the histopathology of the central nervous system in Kiel and, among other things, the histology of nerve and brain diseases in Münster.

Fonts (selection)

• About the combination of syphilis nervosa and aetiologically different meningitis. Dissertation . Wroclaw 1922.
• with Manfred Fuhrmann: textbook on psychiatry for students, doctors, psychologists, theologians and lawyers. 4th edition. Publisher f. Applied Sciences, Baden-Baden 1955.

literature

• 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 , pp. 331 .
• Ioanna Mamali: University and Institutional Psychiatry under National Socialism "Personal cross-connections". In: Axel Karenberg , Dominik Groß, Mathias Schmidt: Research on the history of medicine. (= Contributions of the Rhenish Circle of Medical Historians. Volume 3). University Press, Kassel 2013, ISBN 978-3-86219-416-2 , pp. 215-224.