Hermann Stieve

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Hermann Stieve

Hermann Philipp Rudolf Stieve (born May 22, 1886 in Munich , † September 6, 1952 in Berlin ) was a German professor of anatomy and histology .

Life

After graduation in 1905 at the Wilhelm Gymnasium München of belonging to the Protestant denomination Stieve studied at the universities of Munich and Innsbruck , a study of medicine . In 1906 he became a member of the Corps Franconia Munich . Stieve did military service as a one-year volunteer doctor. In 1912 Stieve was promoted to Dr. med. PhD . He did his internships at the pathological institute of the hospital on the right of the Isar and at the second medical university clinic in Munich. From 1913 he worked as an assistant to Johannes Rückert at the Anatomical Institute in Munich. From 1914 to 1917 he worked as a doctor at the front and then at the Military Medical Academy in Munich and received various military awards. Stieve completed his habilitation for anatomy with the writing Development of the Ovary in the Jackdaw in Munich, before he became the second prosector at the University of Leipzig with Held in 1918 . As a private lecturer , he taught anatomy and anthropology .

In 1918/19 Stieve was a member of the DNVP . In the period 1919/20 he belonged to the Freikorps Leipzig and supported the Kapp Putsch . From 1920 he was a member of the Escherich organization until it was dissolved.

In 1920 he was also promoted to Dr. phil. PhD. In 1921 he was appointed full professor of anatomy at the United Friedrichs University in Halle-Wittenberg . He also took on the role of director of the university's anatomical institute. In 1921, Stieve joined the Stahlhelm . From 1923 to 1928 he was head of the German university committee for physical exercise.

On May 3, 1933, he was elected Rector by the General Council of the University . At his instigation, the University of Halle / Saale was renamed the Martin Luther University. He resigned from the office of rector in November 1933 due to ongoing disputes with the Nazi student body . His Stahlhelm membership was transferred to SA Reserve II in 1934 .

In 1935 he took over a professorship at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin, where he headed the first anatomical institute and the anatomical-biological institute. He carried out these functions until his unexpected death after a stroke in 1952. It was not until 1954 that his successor, Anton Johannes Waldeyer , was appointed.

family

Hermann Stieve's father, Felix Stieve, was a history professor at the University of Munich. The physicians Friedrich-Ernst and Robert Stieve were his sons. The historian and diplomat Friedrich Stieve was his brother, the social worker Hedwig Stieve was his sister.

Act

Many of his publications concerned questions about the structure of the male and female genital organs. His main area of ​​research was the biological and anatomical behavior of the female sexual cycle . The subject of research was in particular the ovary . He is considered to be the discoverer of the fundamental morphological and functional relationships of the function of the human gonad . Fundamental questions about the function of the testicles as well as the ovaries and their dependence on external influences were clarified by him. With his work on the absence of menstrual bleeding due to environmental influences , he laid the foundations for a psychosomatic clinical picture.

In addition, he was co-editor of the specialist journal Medical Clinic and editor of the journal for microscopic-anatomical research .

Stieve belonged to the academies of science in Stockholm , Uppsala and Munich as well as the Leopoldina in Halle (Saale). In 1933 he applied to leave the Leopoldina, but its President Abderhalden was able to convince him to withdraw. He was also a member of the Nobel Committee. Since July 19, 1949 he was a member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin .

From 1950 Stieve was a member of the advisory board of the German Society for Sexual Research .

Activity in the time of National Socialism

Stieve during a lecture, around 1943

While his scientific achievements received universal appreciation, his behavior during the time of National Socialism was sometimes heavily criticized.

The problem with Stieve's research was the lack of suitable research preparations . In 1931 Stieve had written to a curator about the difficulties of his research work: "It is extremely difficult to find ovaries from really healthy girls." During his time in Halle, studies were carried out on various animals, especially domestic chickens. A central aspect was the question of whether, unlike Hermann Knaus and Kyūsaku Ogino's assumption, ovulation can also occur unexpectedly, for example in frightful situations, and thus the predictable fertility-free days specified by Knaus and Ogino would not exist and external influences play a role.

In the first series of experiments, a cage with a fox was placed next to the chickens in order to expose the chickens to a sudden stress factor. In the time of the National Socialist tyranny, Stieve used the system of injustice for his research in an ethically controversial manner. In 1938 he stated with regard to the increased death penalty imposed by the People's Court : “Through the executions, the Anatomical and Anatomical-Biological Institute receives a material that no other institute in the world possesses. I am obliged to process, fix and store this material accordingly. ”Between 1939 and 1945, Stieve, who was not a member of the NSDAP , received 269 bodies of dead women from the prisons and camps in Ravensbrück and Plötzensee .

Stieve is accused of influencing execution dates in several cases in such a way that organs could be removed for scientific research. In a note from the attorney general , about a meeting to which Stieve was called in, it is stated: “As a result of the meeting, I hereby present the following: It is desirable (because of the bombings) to postpone the execution of death sentences in Plötzensee until the evening at 8 p.m. Professor Stieve agreed to this and stated that the bodies could then be picked up for anatomy that same evening. A later date is not acceptable for the anatomical institute, because otherwise the processing of the corpses for research purposes would extend too late into the night, so that the doctors involved could no longer come home by transport. "

Young women are also said to have been urged by their prison doctors to keep a monthly calendar. They are said to have been informed of the execution date corresponding days before their ovulation in order to obtain usable research results. These claims by Bartsch, however, are nowhere proven. There is also no other indication of a corresponding influence of any kind.

Based on such findings, Stieve came to the conclusion that shock experiences can trigger ovulation deviating from the cycle within a few hours. He did not hide the source of his research. For example, on September 15, 1946, he described the case of a 22-year-old woman in the magazine “ Das deutsche Gesundheitwesen ” ( Das Deutsche Gesundheitwesen ), whose menstrual period had stopped for eleven months “due to severe nervous excitement”. But suddenly, “following news that had aroused the woman very much (death sentence), she had a shock bleeding. The following day the woman suddenly died from external violence ... ”. In women, it was the beheaded on August 5, 1943 at 19:42 resistance fighter Cato Bontjes van Beek . Other victims of the Nazi regime who were dissected by Stieve were, for example, Wanda Kallenbach , Elfriede Scholz , Helene Delacher and Wera Apollonowna Obolenskaja . Stieve made at least one exception to his willingness to use the bodies of the executed for his research purposes: he refused to accept the bodies of the assassins on July 20, 1944 .

From 1944 onwards, Stieve was still a member of the scientific advisory board of the authorized representative for health care Karl Brandt .

Stieve himself commented on the question of the ethics of his actions: “I myself dissected all the corpses that were transferred to the anatomy department during the Nazi reign of terror and tried to use the findings for my scientific work and thereby for the benefit of the To exploit humanity. ”There was initially no official criticism of his actions even after the end of the National Socialist dictatorship. The New Germany , the central organ of the GDR government party SED, wrote in its obituary: “His deeds were great. He will live on in his work ”.

On May 13, 2019, the remains of Nazi victims were buried in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof in Berlin. These are tissue samples from people who were murdered in Plötzensee, mostly as political opponents of the regime. The samples were found in his estate by Stieve's heirs in 2016 and given to the Charité . There they recognized their origins and commissioned Johannes Tuchel as head of the German Resistance Memorial Center to investigate their origins. Stieve was particularly interested in the bodies of young women. Tuchel burdens Stieve heavily: We have worked through the fact that he systematically helped the Reich Ministry of Justice to cover up traces of these judicial crimes . Accordingly, the Nazi Ministry of Justice made the corpses available to the physician for dissection shortly after the execution. In return, Stieve arranged for the bodies of those killed to be cremated and buried anonymously. Stieve was particularly interested in the bodies of young women, as he was researching how menstruation works.

Stieve kept lists of his autopsies. He himself dissected 184 people, including 172 women. Of the 18 beheaded women of the Red Orchestra resistance group, Stieve also dissected the 13 younger ones. Here you can find, for example, the name of Libertas Schulze-Boysen , the wife of Harro Schulze-Boysen. The couple was executed on December 22, 1942.

Honors

Stieve received various awards during his military service, including the Iron Cross II class, the Royal Bavarian Military Merit Order IV class with swords and the Knight's Cross of the Franz Joseph Order with war decorations.

Stieve, who lives in Berlin-Lichterfelde in the western part of Berlin , also received the GDR National Prize .

After his death, Stieve was made an honorary member of the German Society for Gynecology and Obstetrics .

literature

  • Wilhelm Bartsch: A master from Germany - the anatomist and gynecologist Hermann Stieve. In: Ärzteblatt Sachsen-Anhalt. 18, 4/2007, pp. 52-55. (online PDF document; 5.08 MB)
  • Theodor Brugsch : Hermann Stieve in memory. In: Scientific annals . 1952, p. 528.
  • Udo Schagen : Research on human organs after "sudden death" and the anatomist Hermann Stieve (1886–1952). In: The Berlin University in the Nazi era. Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-515-08658-7 , p. 35 ff.
  • 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 .
  • Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-14906-1 .
  • Sabine Hildebrandt: The Women on Stieve's list: Victims of National Socialism Whose Bodies Were Used for Anatomical Research. In: Clinical Anatomy. 26, 2013, pp. 3–21.
  • Johannes Tuchel : Executions in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison from 1933 to 1945 and the anatomist Hermann Stieve , German Resistance Memorial Center, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-945812-35-8 .

Web links

Commons : Hermann Stieve  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annual report on the K. Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Munich. ZDB ID 12448436 , 1904/05
  2. ↑ Kösener corps lists. 1960, 106 , 756
  3. ↑ More details z. B. here , here and here
  4. ↑ See also sv: Felix Stieve
  5. ↑ Benno Romeis: Obituary for Hermann Stieve ( memento of October 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), excerpt from the 1953 yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (PDF document; 25 kB)
  6. ^ Dietrich Harder , Alexander Kaul and Fridtjof Nüsslin : Our honorary member Prof. Friedrich-Ernst Stieve for guidance. RöFo: Advances in the field of X-rays and imaging methods 184 (12), pp. 1196-1197. Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart, New York, 2012 (with photo).
  7. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 97.
  8. ↑ Large Bavarian Biographical Encyclopedia. Band PZ. Munich 2005, p. 1901.
  9. ↑ a b c d Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 603.
  10. ^ Wieland Berg, An honorable lie: Abderhalden's letter to delete the Jewish members of the Leopoldina - anticipatory obedience or protective claim, Sudhoffs Archiv, Volume 99, 2015, p. 112
  11. ↑ Udo Schagen: Research on human organs after "sudden death" and the anatomist Hermann Stieve (1886–1952). (on-line)
  12. ↑ a b c d e f g Wilhelm Bartsch: A master from Germany - the anatomist and gynecologist Hermann Stieve. In: Ärzteblatt Sachsen-Anhalt. 4, 2007, pp. 52-55.
  13. ↑ Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie. 66/2, 1942, p. 1456 f. "The effect of captivity and fear on the structure and function of the female sexual organs", quoted from Wilhelm Bartsch.
  14. ↑ Focus , April 14, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Stieve, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stieve, Hermann Philipp Rudolf (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anatomist and histologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH September 6, 1952
Place of death Berlin