Karin Magnussen

Karin Magnussen (born February 9, 1908 in Bremen ; † February 19, 1997 there ) was a German biologist and teacher who propagated the National Socialist race theory . At the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute , she examined the eyes of murdered prisoners from the Auschwitz concentration camp , who were sent to her by the concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele .

Life

Karin Magnussen, daughter of the landscape painter and ceramicist Walter Magnussen and the sculptor Anna Magnussen-Petersen , grew up with her sister in a middle-class family. After graduating from high school in Bremen, she studied biology, geology, chemistry and physics at the University of Göttingen . Magnussen graduated in 1932 with an examination in botany, zoology and geology. In July 1932, she submitted her dissertation : Investigations into the developmental physiology of the butterfly wing. After graduating as Dr. rer. nat. she was employed by Alfred Kühn at the Zoological Institute of the University of Göttingen. In 1936 she passed the first and later the second state examination for higher teaching qualifications, including in biology. In Hannover Magnussen then worked as a teacher at a high school.

National Socialist characteristics

As a fanatical National Socialist, Magnussen joined the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) during her studies , became a member of the NSDAP as early as 1931 , later became a BDM leader and was a member of the National Socialist Teachers' Union (NSLB). As a BDM leader, she gave lectures on race and population policy in the Bremen district. From 1935 she was employed in the race-political office in the Gau Hannover . Her publication Rassen- und Demvölkerungspolitisches Rüstzeug appeared in 1936. The edition of this publication, published by Lehmann in Munich in 1939, was placed on the list of literature to be segregated in the Soviet zone of occupation after the end of the Second World War . In the third edition published in 1943 she writes:

This war is not only about the preservation of the German people, but about the question of which races and peoples should live on the soil of Europe in the future. ... Basically England would not have had an interest in waging this war, but only a completely different people who work as a parasite behind the scenes and who fear that they would otherwise lose everything. In all enemy states, Judaism has a decisive influence. And it was precisely Judaism who recognized most clearly that the decisive battle over the race question had to be waged. The current war has to solve a core racial problem in Europe in which all states are more or less interested: the Jewish question, in addition to pushing back the black threat in the west and removing the Bolshevik threat in the east . Even the Jew who still enjoys hospitality in our country is our war opponent, even if he does not actively intervene in the fight with the weapon. ... From the European point of view, the Jewish question is not solved by the fact that the Jews emigrate from the racially minded to the other states. We have seen that these emigrants only create trouble spots and incite peoples against one another.

Employment at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute

Due to a scholarship, Magnussen was given leave of absence from her teaching profession in autumn 1941 and moved to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWI-A) in Berlin-Dahlem . From then on she worked in the Department of Experimental Hereditary Pathology under the department head Hans Nachtsheim . Her research focus was on the inheritance of eye color in rabbits and humans. Her particular interest was iris heterochromia , which she had been studying since 1938. Magnussen tried to scientifically prove that eye color is not only genetic, but also hormonal. In doing so, she first carried out tests on rabbit eyes. From July 1943 Magnussen was Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer's research assistant at KWI-A. At the KWI-A, Magnussen also got to know Mengele, who was doing research there from time to time.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) funded from 1943 alongside eight other research projects at the KWI-A and one for "exploration of Erbbedingtheit the development of eye color as a basis for racial and lineage studies". This project was edited by Magnussen.

Active participation in human experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp

She received information from a colleague that the Mechau Sinti family from northern Germany would increasingly include twins and family members with iris heterochromia . Members of the family were taken to KWI-A in spring 1943, where Magnussen photographed them. In March 1943 the Sinti family was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , where Mengele had been working as a camp doctor since the end of May 1943. Now Magnussen was able to have Mengele carry out her experiments on humans.

According to Magnussen's instructions, Mengele treated the eyes of this Sinti family with hormonal substances. These painful interventions often led to suppuration and blindness in the victims . The aim of these experiments was to research and eliminate the abnormality in people with iris heterochromia. In the event of the death of the prisoners, Mengele Magnussen promised to let her see the victims' eyes for further research and evaluation. In the second half of 1944 Magnussen received a total of 40 pairs of eyes from the experiment victims from Auschwitz-Birkenau in several deliveries.

The Hungarian prisoner pathologist Miklós Nyiszli noticed after the autopsy of Sinti twins that they were not killed due to illness, but by an injection of chloroform into the heart. Nyiszli had to prepare her eyes and send them to the KWI-A.

Magnussen stayed in Berlin at least until the spring of 1945. She managed to go to relatives in Göttingen with a rabbit and other material from the KWI-A .

After the end of the war and working as a student teacher

After the end of the Second World War Magnussen lived again in Bremen and continued her research. Her research work, completed in 1944, was published in 1949 under the title About the relationships between iris color, histological pigment distribution and pigmentation of the globe in the human eye . Later she was denazified as a follower in Bremen . and lived again in her parents' house at Hagenauer Str. 7.

House Magnussen, Hagenauer Strasse 7

From 1950 Magnussen taught in Bremen, initially at the girls' high school on Karlstrasse. and then at the grammar school on Kurt-Schumacher-Allee in the Vahr district as a civil servant student, including the subject of biology. She was considered a popular teacher who gave interesting biology classes. Magnussen's students were able to examine live and dead rabbits from their breeding, for example. By 1964 Magnussen published articles in scientific journals. In August 1970 Magnussen retired. Magnussen still justified the National Socialist racial ideology in old age. In 1980, in a conversation with the geneticist Benno Müller-Hill , she noted that the Nuremberg race laws did not go far enough. In addition, she denied until the end that Mengele had killed children for her investigations. Through her collaboration with Mengele and the supply of "human material", Magnussen was deeply involved in concentration camp crimes of which she claims to have known nothing.

In 1990 Magnussen moved into a nursing home. When the household was liquidated, several glasses with eyes from Auschwitz were found. According to a family member, these glasses were then disposed of. She wrote two more biographies about her mother and father, which were published in Bremen in the early 1990s. Magnussen died in Bremen in February 1997.

Literature by Karin Magnussen

• Investigations into the developmental physiology of the butterfly wing , Göttingen 1933 (Göttingen, Univ., Diss.)
• Racial and population policy tools: numbers, laws, etc. Ordinances , 2nd exp. Ed., Munich, Berlin: Lehmann, 1939
• Racial and population policy tools: statistics, legislation, etc. War tasks , 3rd ext. Edition Munich [etc.]: Lehmann, 1943
• Walter Magnussen: 1869-1946; Landscape painter and ceramist , Bremen, Hauschild 1991
• Anna Magnussen-Petersen: 1871-1940; Sculptor , Bremen, Hauschild 1992

Literature about Karin Magnussen

• Hans Hesse: First rabbits, then people: The Bremen biologist Karin Magnussen took part in human experiments in Auschwitz , in: Weser-Kurier of April 18, 2020, p. 13.
• Gerald Weßel: There is still a lot to do in Bremen: Interview with Hans Hesse , in: Weser-Kurier from December 14, 2017
• Cathrin Anna Becker: "... I can answer to everyone for what I represented at the time: The biologist and teacher Dr. Karin Magnussen - a follower?" , in: What do we women understand about politics ?: Denazification of completely normal women in Bremen (1945 - 1952) , ed. by Eva Schöck-Quinteros and the students from the project "From the files to the stage". - Bremen: Univ., Inst. For History. 2011
• Sascha Hönighaus: Karin Magnussen. In: Jessica Hoffman, Anja Megel, Robert Parzer & Helena Seidel Eds .: Dahlemer Memories , Frank & Timme Verlag for Scientific Literature, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86596-144-0 .
• Ernst Klee : The Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich: Who Was What Before and After 1945? Fischer, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
• Hans-Walter Schmuhl : Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927–1945. Series: History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, 9. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-799-3 .
• Wolfgang Schieder , Achim Trunk: Adolf Butenandt and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Science, Industry and Politics in the Third Reich. Series: History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, 7th ed. Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-89244-423-7 .
• Carola Sachse Hg .: The connection to Auschwitz. Life sciences and human experiments at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. Documentation of a symposium . Wallstein, Göttingen 2003 series: History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism, 6th ISBN 3-89244-699-7 (interim report see web links).
• Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich: Careers Before and After 1945 , Frankfurt am Main, S. Fischer 2001, ISBN 978-3-10039-310-4 .
• Hans Hesse : Eyes from Auschwitz. A lesson on National Socialist racial madness and medical research. The case of Dr. Karin Magnussen , Klartext, Essen 2001. ISBN 3-89861-009-8 .
• Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1997, ISBN 3-596-14906-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Karin Magnussen in the catalog of the German National Library
• Online (PDF; 204 kB) Magnussen passim. Author Carola Sachse & Benoit Massin. Status: 2000 (preliminary results)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Sascha Hönighaus: Karin Magnussen , Berlin 2007, p. 193f.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 387.
3. ^ ^{A b c d e} Hans Hesse: " I could not do without the evaluation of such valuable material - eyes from Auschwitz: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology and the Karin Magnussen case ", WeltOnline of August 31, 2001
4. ^ German administration for popular education in the Soviet zone of occupation, list of literature to be sorted out, Berlin: Zentralverlag, 1946
5. ↑ From her book: Rassen- und population-political armaments. 3rd edition Lehmanns , Munich 1943, pp. 201–203. "Black threat" probably means Africans, cf. Rhineland bastards , a popular Nazi enemy
6. ^ Wolfgang Schieder, Achim Trunk: Adolf Butenandt and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society: Science, Industry and Politics in the Third Reich. , Göttingen 2004, p. 297f.
7. ^ Sascha Hönighaus: Karin Magnussen , Berlin 2007, p. 195.
8. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927–1945. History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism, Volume 9. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, p. 370.
9. ^ ^{A b} Rolf Winau: Medical experiments in concentration camps. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 1: The Organization of Terror. CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-52961-5 , p. 174.
10. ↑ Ilkka Remes: The legacy of evil, p. 3 (pdf; 2.8 MB) .
11. ^ Sascha Hönighaus: Karin Magnussen , Berlin 2007, p. 197.
12. ^ ^{A b c} Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 486.
13. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927–1945. History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism, Volume 9. Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, p. 490.
14. ↑ https://brema.suub.uni-bremen.de/periodical/zoom/900361
15. ↑ 30 years of high school on Kurt-Schumacher-Allee: 1968 - 1998; updated anniversary publication, Bremen, [approx. 1998]; Note: Enth .: Festschrift "25 Years of High School on Kurt-Schumacher-Allee" and an addition for the years 1993 to 1998
16. ↑ ^{a b} Sascha Hönighaus: Karin Magnussen , Berlin 2007, pp. 199f.
17. ↑ https://www.weser-kurier.de/bremen/stadtteile/stadtteile-bremen-mitte_artikel,-da-gibt-es-in-bremen-noch-einiges-zu-tun-_arid,1679705.html#comments , last accessed on April 19, 2020.