Heinrich Kraut (nutrition researcher)

Heinrich Kraut (born September 2, 1893 in Stuttgart , † June 23, 1992 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German chemist and nutrition researcher.

Life

Kraut was the son of the Württemberg politician of the same name, Heinrich von Kraut . Kraut studied chemistry in Tübingen , Stuttgart and Munich . He received his doctorate in 1921 under Richard Willstätter in Munich, his habilitation followed in 1925. In August 1928 he became head of the chemistry department of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Occupational Physiology ; this department was converted into the Institute for Nutritional Physiology in 1956 by the Max Planck Society . Kraut switched to the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster and became an adjunct professor there in 1932.

Nazi era

On May 1, 1937 , he joined the NSDAP . Subsequently, he devoted himself to nutritional physiology and worked as an advisor to the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture .

For the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture he led a. a. the herb action through. This large-scale experiment, also known as the bread and butter campaign , was carried out on forced laborers and prisoners of war in the Westphalia-North and South Westphalia Gau . He calculated the food requirements for various population groups, which, as Kraut's norms in World War II, were the basis for the allocation of rations . For his work he received the War Merit Cross 2nd Class.

post war period

After the end of the war, Kraut prepared reports for the defense in the Nuremberg trials against Flick , Krupp and IG Farben . On March 17, 1948, he made an affidavit on nutrition in the IG, Farben Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp , in which he claimed: “After all, the inmates' rations of protein and fat were enough to cause nutritional damage due to a lack of protein and fat prevent". This statement was not true, because the life expectancy in Auschwitz-Monowitz concentration camp was normally no more than three months.

Kraut was one of the founders of the German Nutrition Society (DGE) in 1953 and was its president from 1956 to 1958. In 1963 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit and an honorary doctorate from the medical faculty in Münster.

In 1964, on behalf of the Max Planck Institute, he founded a research station in Bambuli in Tanzania , which is now named after him. It was recognized by the Kübel Foundation as an exemplary development aid project . From 1968 to 1973 Kraut was President of Welthungerhilfe , which in 1972 donated a “Professor Kraut Prize”.

An honorary doctorate from Beersheba University in Israel is also mentioned in an obituary . "The honor was presumably given in ignorance of his NSDAP membership, his research on nutrition and performance during the Nazi era and his expert work in the context of the Nuremberg trials."

literature

• Joachim Kühnau: Professor Heinrich Kraut 70 years old , in: Journal for Food Analysis and Research A, Volume 125 (1963) 103-106, doi : 10.1007 / BF01811052
• Dietrich Eichholtz : The "herb campaign". Ruhr Industry, Nutrition Science and Forced Labor 1944 , in: Ulrich Herbert (Ed.): Europe and the "Reich insert". Foreign civilian workers, prisoners of war and concentration camp prisoners in Germany 1938–1945 , Essen 1991, pp. 270–294.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Kraut in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ herb campaign
2. ↑ Peter Hertel on our doorstep. A childhood in the Nazi state - experienced early, explored late , p. 132ff, agenda Verlag Münster 2018, ISBN 978-3-89688-596-8
3. ^ 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, p. 337.
4. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Fischer Taschenbuch 2005, p. 337.
5. ↑ Irene Raehlmann: Ergonomics in National Socialism: an analysis of the sociology of science , VS: Wiesbaden 2005, p. 107.