Hubertus Strughold

Hubertus Strughold (born June 15, 1898 in Westtünnen near Hamm , Westphalia , † September 25, 1986 in San Antonio / Texas ) was a German aeronautical doctor and an important pioneer in space medicine. After his death, Strughold's activities in World War II during the Nazi era were investigated in more detail, and the allegations related to his involvement in human experiments in concentration camps diminished his reputation significantly.

Life

After graduating from the humanistic grammar school Hammonense in Hamm, Strughold studied medicine and natural sciences at the universities of Münster , Göttingen , Munich and Würzburg from 1918 . From 1918 he was a member of the Catholic student union AV Cheruscia Münster. In 1922 he was promoted to Dr. phil. doctorate , a year later in Würzburg as Dr. med. The subject of the first dissertation was the effect of the warfare agents diphenylarsine chloride (blue cross substance) and ethylarsine dichloride on human skin . As an assistant to Max von Frey , Strughold first worked at the Physiological Institute in Würzburg, and later at the same institute in Freiburg. In 1927 he completed his habilitation in sensory physiology. For the next two years, Strughold was a Fellow of the Rockefeller Foundation at the Physiological Institutes of Western University in Chicago and Cleveland. Back in Würzburg, he took on a teaching position in flight physiology in 1929 . From March 8, 1933 he was an associate professor of physiology in Würzburg.

On April 1, 1935, Strughold moved to the Reich Ministry of Aviation in Berlin . In Berlin he took over the management of the aeronautical medical research institute newly founded at the university, the leading aeromedical institute in Germany. All questions of military medical basic and functional research were dealt with here. From 1936 he was co-editor of the aviation medicine magazine ; the following year he became a corresponding member of the German Academy for Aviation Research. In 1941 Strughold was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

In October 1942 Strughold was a participant in a conference that dealt with the rescue of pilots in distress at sea. The conference also reported on the results of human experiments carried out on prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp . Some of these attempts represented severe abuse and resulted in the death of individual prisoners. In 1942, Hans Nachtsheim, among others, carried out a series of negative pressure tests on six children with epilepsy from a psychiatric clinic in Brandenburg-Görden at the von Strughold Institute . In 1944 he became a consultant aviation physician with the chief medical officer of the Air Force.

After the war Strughold was from October 1945 to February 1947 German Head of Aeromedical Center in Heidelberg, was a professor at the same time director of the Institute of Physiology of the University of Heidelberg . He was never charged in connection with Nazi crimes , he contributed several affidavits for the defense of the defendants at the Nuremberg doctors' trial . As part of Operation Paperclip , he moved to the United States in August 1947, following an offer from the American Air Force. Since 1947 he was a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

On February 9, 1949, Strughold founded the world's first institute for space medicine at the US Airforce Aviation University , with Strughold as the first professor of space medicine . In 1962 he became director of the Aerospace Medical Division of the US Air Force. Even then, Strughold assumed that the medical problems of space flight, such as the effects of weightlessness , radiation and acceleration, would have to be solved in the next 10 to 15 years. Subsequently, he and his team carried out crucial preparatory work for the medical care of the Apollo program .

In 1968 Strughold retired and in 1971 he married.

In 1983 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. In 1985 the Texas Senate declared a Hubertus Strughold Day in his honor. He died on his farm in Texas at the age of 88. The Space Medicine Branch of the Aerospace Medical Association has given the Strughold Award to distinguished scientists in the field of aviation medicine since 1963; this price was terminated in 2014. Ten years earlier, the German Society for Aerospace Medicine DGLRM parted with the science award of the same name (2004), and Strughold's name was also deleted from the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo (New Mexico) in 2006 .

Others

The documentary "Nazi criminals on the trail - The secret knowledge of the V2" thematizes Strughold and von Braun's activities before 1945.

Publications (selection)

• with Siegfried Ruff : Outline of aviation medicine. JA Barth, Leipzig 1939.
• The Green and Red Planet: A Physiological Study of the Possibility of Life on Mars. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1953.
• Your Body Clock. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1971.

literature

• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
• Mark Campbell and Viktor Harsch: Hubertus Strughold: Life and Works in the Fields of Space Medicine. Rethra-Verlag, Neubrandenburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-937394-47-3 .
• Holger Münzel: Max von Frey. Life and work with special consideration of his sensory-physiological research. Würzburg 1992 (= Würzburg Medical History Research , 53), ISBN 3-88479-803-0 , p. 203 f. ( Hubertus Strughold ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Hubertus Strughold in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Hubertus Strughold in Aeromedical history , database of aeronautical medical researchers in the Nazi era (Gaeromed Db)
• Portrait of nazi prompts protest , The New York Times , October 26, 1993.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Jens Nikolai: Operation moon landing: NASA and the ex-Nazis. Documentation. ARTE, January 8, 2019, accessed July 10, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Short biography with Klaus Dörner (ed.): The Nürnberger Ärzteprocess 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. Access tape. KG Saur, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-598-32028-0 , p. 148.
3. ↑ together with Ludolph Brauer and Hermann Rein
4. ↑ Klee, Personenlexikon, p. 610; and Karl-Heinz Roth: Deadly Heights. The negative pressure chamber experiments in the Dachau concentration camp and their significance for aeronautical research in the ›Third Reich‹, In Angelika Ebbinghaus , Klaus Dörner : Structures, paradigms and mentalities in aeronautical research in the ›Third Reich‹ 1933 to 1941. The way to the Dachau concentration camp . In: 1999. Journal for Social History of the 20th and 21st Century , vol. 15, 2000, no. 2, pp. 49–77; again in this., Ed .: Destroy and Heal. The Nuremberg Medical Trial and its Consequences. Structure, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-351-02514-9 , ( table of contents ).
5. ^ ^{A b} Project Paperclip: Dark side of the Moon BBC News, November 21, 2005.
6. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Brain research and the murder of the sick. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research 1937–1945 (PDF file; 243 kB) p. 45 Note 148.
7. ↑ The statements in English translation at the Nuremberg Trials Project ( 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. 
8. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Hubertus Strughold. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed June 14, 2016 . 
9. ↑ Associated Press : Former Nazi removed from Space Hall of Fame . MSNBC. May 19, 2006. Retrieved May 19, 2006.
10. ↑ www.history.de ( Memento from August 2, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) A film by Martin JO Hughes; a broadcast by ZDFinfo 2011, 42 min.