Johannes Ludwig Schmitt

Johannes Ludwig Schmitt (born June 24, 1896 in Stuttgart , † September 19, 1963 ) was a German physician, politician (Black Front) and political activist.

Live and act

Schmitt was born in Stuttgart in 1896. From 1906 he attended the St. Ottilien monastic high school in Dillingen . He then took part in the First World War from 1914 as a soldier in a Swabian regiment . During the war, Schmitt met, among others, the later National Socialist politician Rudolf Hess , who became his friend and later his patient.

After the end of the First World War, Schmitt joined the Epp Freikorps and participated in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic . From 1919 Schmitt studied medicine at the universities of Munich and Tübingen . In 1923 he completed his studies with a doctorate and then settled as a general practitioner in Munich.

In 1930 Schmitt founded a private clinic in Munich's Leopoldstrasse (Schmitt Clinic), which quickly became popular. The alternative healing methods used by Schmitt, such as homeopathy , herbal baths and practical psychosomatics , the belief in body and soul unity and the connections between physical illness and psychological processes met with a particular response .

Politically, Schmitt stood out as a supporter of the Black Front , a secessionist group of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). Schmitt came to this group primarily through its leader, his friend from his time with the Freikorps Epp, the renegade Nazi politician Otto Strasser .

In 1933, after Hitler's " seizure of power ", who saw Strasser as an intimate enemy, Schmitt Strasser hid in his private apartment for a few months and finally helped him to flee to Czechoslovakia . A few weeks later, in April 1934, Schmitt was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to the Stadelheim prison in Munich .

In the early summer of the same year, Schmitt was scheduled to be shot as part of the murder campaign known as the “ Röhm Putsch ”. The motive for putting him on the death list was probably the help that Schmitt had given Otto Strasser, who was hated by the NSDAP. Schmitt escaped the murder because the SS command dispatched to his liquidation did not know that he was already in police custody and was looking in vain for him in and around Munich. In his place was a music critic Wilhelm Schmi d killed, the one with him, Schmi tt , had confused. After Schmitt's whereabouts in Stadelheim became known to the SS, he was rescued by a caretaker who hid him in a wooden crate from the SS. When he was discovered there, Hitler had already broken off the murder.

Schmitt remained in custody until October 1935. Since his Munich clinic had been confiscated in the meantime, Schmitt practiced as a doctor in Berlin after his release, where the “Deputy Leader”, Rudolf Hess, and allegedly Heinrich Himmler were among his patients.

In May 1941 Schmitt was arrested again and interned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp - allegedly because he had encouraged his former company comrade Rudolf Hess to "fly to England". In Sachsenhausen, Schmitt also wrote his work, the art of breathing , in spite of adverse circumstances .

After the Second World War, Schmitt resumed his work as a general practitioner in Munich. He was also involved as a professional interest representative. He participated in the establishment of the Emergency Association of German Doctors , which at times included more than 20,000 medical professionals, and acted as 1st Chairman of the Medical District Association in Munich. He was also the spokesman for the Munich Oppositions e. V. and co-founder of the European Union for liberal medicine .

After founding his Munich clinic, Schmitt achieved great success with the so-called breathing massage, which was now the focus of his therapy. However, Schmitt did not experience general medical recognition of breath massage during his lifetime.

As a lobbyist, Schmitt turned against the institution of the Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians and presented the “Munich Plan for the Reform of Social Insurance”.

Works

• Brain trauma and duodenal ulcer , 1922. (Dissertation)
• Breath and character , Augsburg 1926.
• The Song of Songs , Augsburg 1927.
• Breath, posture, movement , Augsburg 1927.
• The golden ratio of marriage , Augsburg 1927.
• On the ethics and aesthetics of physical exercise. A contribution , Augsburg 1927.
• Cosmology. Secrets and realizations , Augsburg 1928.
• German nutrition , Munich 1932.
• Breath healing , Munich 1956.
• Atom, madness and reality , Munich 1956.

literature

• Euromed, Issue 20, Munich-Graefelfing 1963.
• G. Lotzbeck: The therapy of the Schmitt-Klinik , in: Atem, Zeitschrift für Atempflege Heft 4, S. 73ff.

Web links

• Literature by and about Johannes Ludwig Schmitt in the catalog of the German National Library