Karl Lempp

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Karl Lempp (born January 21, 1881 in Heilbronn ; † July 31, 1960 in Stuttgart ) was a German doctor who had played a key role in children's “euthanasia” in Württemberg during the Nazi era .

Origin and professional career

Lempp came from a family of officials and pastors in Württemberg. From 1913 he worked as a "city doctor" in Stuttgart. In 1915 he founded the municipal children's home, which later became the municipal children's hospital and became the first chief physician there. Since the founding of the Stuttgart City Health Department in 1928, he was also the deputy head of the department in addition to his role as chief physician.

time of the nationalsocialism

Lempp was a member of the NSDAP from 1933 until the end of the war . He was also a member of the National Socialist German Medical Association , Reich Association of German Civil Servants , National Socialist People's Welfare and the National Socialist Altherrenbund (NS student combat aid ).

Lempp was "recruited by T4 to commit child murder in 1943 ". According to his senior physician Magdalena Schütte at the beginning of the 1960s, Lempp only allowed himself to be admitted to the central service station T4 as a pretense, consented to child killings and ordered lethal drugs from the forensic institute of the SD .

20 years after the end of the war, the documents of the municipal children's hospital were destroyed, so that in 2009 Karl-Horst Marquart was only able to evaluate the death certificates of 506 children. He interprets 52 deaths, in which “severe congenital diseases” were diagnosed, but for which there is no medically plausible causal connection with a natural death, as “euthanasia” deaths. A third died of pneumonia , suggesting the administration of an overdose of Luminal , which caused twilight sleep followed by pneumonia. Among the 52 deaths are six children with the dubious diagnosis of “idiocy”, including two children who were only two years old at the time of diagnosis. Such a diagnosis cannot be made at this age, so it must be a fake.

post war period

From May 15 to July 18, Lempp was in custody by order of the American military government. This suspected him to have been involved in the euthanasia crimes in the city children's hospital. However, he was never charged, although in 1947 he was named “Obermedizinalrat Dr. Lempp, Stuttgart, director of the children's hospital ”is on a list of the military government, about 24 “ persons who are considered to be criminally responsible ” . That same year he was denazified , but to a payment of 2,000 ℛℳ condemned to a reparation fund. He held his position as head of the municipal health department until 1949. In 1950 he retired. In 1954 he was awarded the title of professor .

Lempp was married and had two sons.

Aftermath

In 2009, a grandson of Karl Lempp, Volker Lempp, and the Tübingen youth psychiatrist Reinhart Lempp tried to stop the publication of the book Stuttgarter NS-Täter by means of an injunction because of a chapter on Karl L. They took action against the publisher and against the author of the chapter on Karl Lempp, Karl-Horst Marquart. They withdrew the lawsuit on the first day of the trial.

The responsible mayor Werner Wölfle , party "The Greens", rejects a commemorative plaque at the place of Lempp's crimes after he had not given an answer to the request of a relevant working group for 18 months. Wölfle claims that while there is strong evidence that this “children's department” existed in the past, there is no evidence to back it up.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . 2. actual Edition. Fischer, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Karl-Horst Marquart: Karl Lempp. Responsible for forced sterilization and "child euthanasia" . In: Hermann G. Abmayer (ed.): Stuttgart Nazi perpetrators. From fellow travelers to mass murderers . Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart, 2nd edition 2009, ISBN 978-3-89657-136-6 , pp. 100-107 ( PDF ).
  • Karl-Horst Marquart: "Treatment recommended." Nazi medical crimes against children and young people in Stuttgart. Butterfly, Stuttgart 2015.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Horst Marquart: Karl Lempp. Responsible for forced sterilization and "child euthanasia" . In: Hermann G. Abmayer (ed.): Stuttgart Nazi perpetrators. From fellow travelers to mass murderers . Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart, 2nd edition 2009, p. 101.
  2. ↑ quoted in: Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 365.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 365.
  4. ^ Dietrich Heißenbüttel: The split Wölfle. In: Context: weekly newspaper , December 5, 2015, p. 3.
  5. ↑ Neue Rheinische Zeitung: grandson of a "Stuttgart Nazi perpetrator" surprisingly backs down - accusation of forced sterilization
  6. ^ Lawsuit against Buch withdrawn
  7. ↑ Historians argue about killed children , Stuttgarter Zeitung , November 22, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Lempp, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician involved in child “euthanasia” during the Nazi era
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilbronn
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1960
Place of death Stuttgart