Hermann Eyer

Hermann Eyer (born June 29, 1906 in Mannheim , † February 28, 1997 in Munich ) was a German hygienist , microbiologist and university professor.

education and profession

Hermann Eyer was the son of the director of Thyssen-Rheinstahl AG Fritz Eyer and his wife Margarete, née Linzenmeier. Eyer completed his school days at the Realgymnasium in Karlsruhe with the Abitur. He then studied mechanical engineering at the Technical Universities of Karlsruhe and Aachen , but dropped out after a year. He then completed a chemistry degree at Heidelberg University and passed the diploma examination in this subject in 1929. In 1926 he became a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Arminia Heidelberg . Eyer, who worked as an assistant at the Chemical Institute of Heidelberg University from 1927 to 1932, obtained his doctorate in this subject in 1930. phil. nat. He also completed a degree in medicine in Heidelberg , which he obtained in 1932 with a state examination and doctorate as a Dr. med. completed. Eyer was approved in 1933 and in November 1933 was employed at the Hygienic-Bacteriological Institute of the University of Erlangen , where he later received his habilitation .

time of the nationalsocialism

Membership in Nazi organizations

After the transfer of power to the National Socialists , he joined the SA in 1933 and became a member of the NSDAP at the beginning of August 1935 , despite the party's ban on membership ( membership number 3,687,955).

University lecturer and typhus researcher

After completing his habilitation in Erlangen in 1936 , he became a private lecturer at the University of Berlin in 1937 and was appointed professor there in 1943. In 1937 he was seconded to the Robert Koch Institute , where he researched vaccine infections in mice in the Virus Research Department under the direction of Eugen Haagens. In the spring of 1939, Eyer and his assistant Przybylkiewicz took part in a series of tests with spotted fever vaccinations in Addis Ababa in Italian-occupied Ethiopia , and with the latter had the Duke of Aosta Institute itself set up a corresponding vaccination. Previously, he had participated in the Abyssinian War as a medical officer on the instructions of the Wehrmacht Health Management to observe the effects of certain drugs in the Italian army .

Since 1938 he was married to Gertrud, née Decker.

Second World War: Head of the Institute for Spotted Fever and Virus Research at the OKH in Krakow

After the beginning of the Second World War , after the German occupation of Poland from October 1939 until the withdrawal of the Wehrmacht in 1944 , he headed the Institute for typhus and virus research of the Army High Command in Krakow , most recently with the rank of senior staff doctor . Deputy director at this Cracow institute was the medical officer Heinrich Mückter , who later became the research director at Grünenthal , under whose direction the sleeping pill and sedative Contergan was developed. The Polish biologist Rudolf Weigl headed a branch of this institution in Lemberg from the summer of 1941 .

From April 1940 Eyer had a vaccine according to Weigl (lice vaccine) for typhus immunization produced at the institute he ran, which he preferred to the yolk sac vaccines. The competing preparations were tested in a comparative series of tests on humans in the Buchenwald concentration camp to clarify their effectiveness. On February 8, 1943, together with the senior staff doctor Bernhard Schmidt from the Army Sanitary Inspection, Eyer visited the spotted fever test station of the hygiene institute of the Waffen-SS in the Buchenwald concentration camp, which was headed by the SS doctor Erwin Ding-Schuler :

"It is true that Dr. Eyer, accompanied by another doctor, visited Block 46 in Buchenwald. I was given the task of showing him the medical histories and temperature charts of the test subjects. He asked me some technical questions about this. Especially because of the strophantine dosage [cardiac tonic] "

- The former Kapo and head nurse Arthur Dietzsch of the typhus station in Block 46 in a statement from June 28, 1960 in the pedestrian trial

Eyer led 1940 also genetic biology factors for typhus infections: These infections also went by "lousy and filthy quarters typhus sick Jews in Inner Poland" from, so it would have to "closure of all endemic foci," the "isolation of the Jewish ghettos ," the "elimination of all Population shifts ”and“ mass delousing ”of those who u. a. in the “ caftan of the ghetto Jew”.

post war period

At the end of the war, Eyer was briefly taken prisoner and was interrogated about his activities by members of the US Army . On February 26, 1947, as part of the Nuremberg doctors' trial , he made an affidavit in favor of the defendant Wilhelm Beiglböck .

From 1946 Eyer was a full professor of hygiene at the University of Bonn and director of the Hygienic Institute there. In 1957, Eyer moved to the University of Munich , where he was Professor of Hygiene and Medical Microbiology and Director of the Max von Pettenkofer Institute until his retirement in 1974.

From 1952 he was a corresponding member of the American Chemical Society . Since 1957 he belonged to the Leopoldina . From 1966 he was a member of the American Society for Microbiology and Hygiene . When military medical advisory board of the Federal Armed Forces , he was also a long time the speaker and he also belonged to the Federal Health Council of. He chaired the board of trustees of the Bavarian Academy for Occupational Medicine and the German Society for Hygiene and Microbiology .

In the so-called pedestrian trial, the Limburg public prosecutor's office was investigating suspicious people for murder in the Buchenwald concentration camp from 1960 onwards . Persons named in the Ding diary and in the documents relating to the Nuremberg medical trial were involved in the investigation. The proceedings were discontinued in mid-1961. In the reasons for hiring Eyer and Schmidt, it was stated that “one could not have expected that they would do anything about this”.

Honors

• Bavarian State Medal for Social Merit (1975)
• Bavarian Order of Merit
• Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class (1986)

Fonts (selection)

• Contributions to the chemistry of insulin , Heidelberg, Naturwiss.-math. Diss. 1930, A medical * topography of a selected rural district in the Upper Palatinate Grenzmark, Erlangen, Med. Hab.-Schr., 1936.
• The problem of spotted fever vaccination and its importance in practice . In: From: The public health service . Vol. 7. Georg Thieme, Leipzig, 1941, no. 5.
• Lice and delousing with special consideration of typhus control . From: The practical disinfector . Hygiene-Verl. Deleiter, Berlin-Lichtenberg 1941, no. 5.
• About typhus . From: Hippocrates. Hippocrates-Verl. Marquardt & Cie, Stuttgart 1942, no. 46.
• Nutritional hygiene expert opinion on the question of the physiological depreciation of honey by heating to the temperatures permitted by the regulation on honey: Expert opinion . From: Federal series of publications for food law and food science ; H. 35, Behr, Hamburg 1961.

literature

• Angelika Ebbinghaus and Karl Heinz Roth : Short biographies on the medical process . In: Klaus Dörner (Ed.): The Nuremberg Medical Process 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. Saur, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-598-32028-0 ( index volume ) ISBN 3-598-32020-5 (microfiches).
• 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 .
• Günther Schierz (Ed.): Collected contributions to hygiene and microbiology: Eine Festschrift f. Hermann Eyer. [To the completion of d. 65th year of life on June 29, 1971] , Werk-Verl. Banaschewski, Munich- Graefelfing 1971, ISBN 3-8040-0178-5 .
• Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004. ( online , PDF file; 1.08 MB)

Web links

• Literature by and about Hermann Eyer in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} August Ludwig Degener, Walter Habel: Who is who ?: the German who's who , Volume 48, Schmidt - Römhild, 2003, p. 329.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Angelika Ebbinghaus and Karl Heinz Roth: Short biographies on the medical process . In: Klaus Dörner (Ed.): The Nuremberg Medical Process 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. , Munich 2000, p. 92.
3. ↑ Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 51.
4. ↑ Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, pp. 31, 52.
5. ↑ Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 37f.
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary for the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 142.
7. ↑ Pharma-Brief 1/1999 ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the BUKO Pharma campaign 
8. ↑ Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 52.
9. ↑ Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, pp. 44f, 51.
10. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main 1997, pp. 329, 343.
11. ↑ Quoted in Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 343.
12. ^ Hermann Eyer: The infectious diseases transmitted by lice and their control , in: Medical World 11, 1940, pp. 261-264. Quoted in: Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 51f.
13. ↑ Armin D. Steuer: Prehistory of the Contergan inventor . In: Der Spiegel : one day on Spiegel-online
14. ↑ Klaus Dörner (Ed.): The Nuremberg Medical Process 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. , Munich 2000, pp. 92, 250.
15. ^ Member entry by Hermann G. Eyer at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on October 12, 2012.
16. ↑ Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 215.
17. ↑ Thomas Werther: Typhus research in the German Reich 1914–1945. Studies on the relationship between science, industry and politics with special consideration of IG Farben. Inaugural dissertation at the Philipps University of Marburg. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 216.