Heinrich Reichel (hygienist)

Heinrich Reichel (born October 15, 1876 in Wels , Upper Austria, † March 31, 1943 in Graz ) was an Austrian hygienist .

Life

His parents were Anton Reichel (1843-1884) and Carolin (1851-1914). His brother was the later graphic artist Carl Anton Reichel . His father came from a farming family in Hennersdorf and was a notary in Grießkirchen. After his early death from a supposed syphilis disease, his uncle, the anatomist Carl Rabl , took over Heinrich's guardianship. Heinrich Reichel was married to Cäcilia (née Rosenauer), the marriage had nine children, one of his sons was Erwin Reichel , his daughter Hertha married Erwin Wascher , his daughter Ottilie Hermann Derschmidt .

Heinrich Reichel studied medicine in Vienna from 1895 to 1901 , and from 1899 in Heidelberg under the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin . After receiving his doctorate on June 12, 1901, he wanted to devote himself to psychiatry and continued his training with Wilhelm Wundt at the Fechner Institute in Leipzig. Here he realized that he didn't want to specialize in psychiatry.

In 1902 he did hospital service as an assistant doctor in the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Spital , where he turned to hygiene under Max von Gruber . In 1903 he became assistant and student of Roland Graßberger at the Hygiene Institute of the University of Vienna , who sent him to Strasbourg in 1903/04. In 1910 he received his habilitation and in 1914 he was appointed associate professor .

As a hygienist in World War I, his job was to fight epidemics in the eastern theater of war.

In the interwar period his interest turned to questions of racial hygiene and related fields of knowledge such as social hygiene , racial biology and family research. He became a member of the Viennese Society for Racial Care, founded by Otto Reche , which was connected to the German Racial Hygiene Society under his friend Alfred Ploetz , and in 1928 a member of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO).

Between 1923 and 1930 Reichel held the voluntary, well-attended course 'Racial Hygiene' for the training of gymnastics teachers at Austrian universities and advocated the compulsory sterilization of “mentally ill people and people with criminal dispositions”. In 1933 Reichel also gave lectures on eugenics for all Viennese high school graduates. In November 1925 he was a co-founder of the Vienna Society for Microbiology and in 1928 of the “Austrian Federation for Public Appeal and Heritage” (ÖBVE) in Vienna.

Reichel was the first to succeed in institutionalizing some of the eugenics at a university. From 1933 to 1942 he was a full professor of hygiene at the University of Graz . At the Hygiene Institute there, he founded a population policy office, in which Rudolf Polland also worked. His students include Friedrich Stumpfl , Karl Thums and Herwigh Rieger .

His research areas were medical-mathematical border areas, disinfection methods and, on questions of public health, the connection with nicotine and alcohol addiction . At the meeting of the medical association in 1934, he argued against active euthanasia. With his work "The position of racial hygiene for hygiene and medicine" (1935) he became a co-founder of this subject.

Reichel's position during the Nazi era was ambivalent. However, he was neither a member of the NSDAP nor was he nominated as a sterilization expert.

Publications

• The main tasks of racial hygiene in the present. 1922.
• Disinfection. In: Handbook of microbiological technology. 1923.
• Family and genetic research using the example of Goethe's blood relationship. 1926.
• with K. Spiro : Ionic action and antagonism of the ions. 1927.
• with K. Spiro: Protoplasmic poison. 1927.
• Folk nutrition, alcohol: facts and ideas for reform. 1930.
• Basics of hereditary science and eugenics. Eight lectures by Prof. Dr. Heinrich Reichel Vienna and a lecture by Prof. Dr. Hermann Muckermann Berlin held in the " Ravag ", as part of the "Hour for Public Health" Vienna 1930 (self-published by the Wiener Gesellschaft für Rassenpflege, issue 3).
• Home hygiene problems. In: Contributions to urban housing and settlement management. Volume 177; 1930, pp. 25-36.
• Disinfection and sterilization theory. 1931.
• About the thermal and actin resistance of bacteria. 1931.
• What are the most pressing demands of racial hygiene today. In: Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift. Volume 47, 1934.
• Healthy offspring. 1935.
• The most important methodical methods in the processing of test results and observations. 1938.

literature

• German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition. Volume 8 (2011).
• Marlene Jantsch:  Reichel, Heinrich. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 9, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-7001-1483-4 , p. 29.
• Thomas Mayer: “Eugenic Networks in Austria in the Interwar Period”. In: Wecker, Regina & Braunschweig, Sabine & Imboden, Gabriela & Küchenhoff, Bernhard & Ritter, Hans Jakob (eds.). How National Socialist is Eugenics? International debates on the history of eugenics in the 20th century . Vienna / Cologne / Weimar: Böhlau 2009. pp. 219–232.
• Maria Wolf: Eugenische Vernunft: Interventions in the reproductive culture by medicine 1900-2000. Böhlau, Vienna 2008.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ on IFEO a detailed entry in the English language Wikipedia
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Mayer, Thomas (2009). “Eugenic Networks in Austria in the Interwar Period”. In: Wecker, Regina & Braunschweig, Sabine & Imboden, Gabriela & Küchenhoff, Bernhard & Ritter, Hans Jakob (eds.). How National Socialist is Eugenics? International debates on the history of eugenics in the 20th century . Vienna / Cologne / Weimar: Böhlau. P. 225ff.
3. ↑ on the Vienna Society for Microbiology see the explanations on the history of the Society for Hygiene, Microbiology and Preventive Medicine on their website (visited on October 17, 2014)