Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police

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The Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police was established on December 21, 1941 at the suggestion of Heinrich Himmler . The line took Robert Ritter , of the "race-known union gathering and sifting of Gypsies and Gypsy half-breeds" worked and the Racial Hygiene Research Center at the Reich Health Office had conducted. The offices of the Criminal Biology Institute were located in the building of the Reich Criminal Police Office (RKPA) in Berlin , Werderscher Markt 5–6. Due to the war, the “Central Criminal Biological Institute” moved its headquarters to Hřensko / Herrnskretschen in 1943 ; other departments and institutes led by Robert Ritter relocated to other alternative locations.

The institute had the task of "providing professional advice to the security police authorities and departments on all relevant issues and to participate in the design and organizational structure of this new and war-important branch of the security police."

activities

Ritter and his employees of the Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police examined young people who were imprisoned in the youth concentration camps in Moringen and Uckermark , and divided them into “unfit”, “disruptor”, “occasional failure”, “long-term failure”, “questionable parents” and “capable of being brought up” a. The forensic biological assessment of the institute decided which block of the youth protection camp the young person was in. The reports of the block leaders then formed the basis for a " forensic biological prognosis", according to someone in a mental hospital admitted or as an adult in a concentration camp was transferred. 

The institute was involved in the planning of a law against "community aliens", which was directed against "the failure group of the work-shy and careless" and "anti-community criminals and criminals of inclination". In a late version of the draft law, which was no longer implemented due to the war, provisions included custody for an indefinite period, admission to a concentration camp, sterilization and the death penalty . In the introduction to the law, it says:

“Decades of experience show that criminals are continually complementing each other from inferior clans. The individual members of such clans are found again and again to members of similarly poor clans and thereby ensure that inferiority is not only inherited from sex to sex, but often increases to criminality. "

The Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police should promote the early detection of "criminally inclined people" and record the " anti-social and criminal clans" in a card index. 

Forerunner and parallel institution

The director of the Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police, Robert Ritter, was considered an expert in anthropological and genealogical studies on the "Gypsy Question" and was in charge of a "Population Research Center" as early as 1936, which from 1937 was called the "Racial Hygiene and Population Research Center" and, among others, of the German Research Foundation was promoted.

There was also a “criminal biological research center”, which was assigned to the Reich Health Office as “Department L2” and was headed by Ferdinand von Neureiter since 1937 . While department L1 kept statistics on “hereditary diseases and anti-socials” and developed “standard procedures for sterility”, the forensic biology research center of the Reich Health Office collected “findings” about the supposedly “unfavorable genetic disposition in the people”. The investigations extended to juvenile female criminals, children of persons in preventive detention, as well as moral criminals and male homosexuals . After Neureiter was appointed to the University of Strasbourg, Robert Ritter continued this department from 1940 onwards under the name “Racial Hygiene and Criminal Biology Research Center”, which was renamed “Criminal Biology Research Center” of the Reich Health Office shortly afterwards. Since in 1941 funds and exemption of personnel were hardly approved for research, but still for military economic purposes, Ritter deleted the word "research center" and referred to his department at the Reich Health Office as "criminal biology institute".

The Criminal Biology Institute of the Security Police, founded at the end of 1941, was headed by Ritter in personal union. He took several employees there who had previously worked at the (almost) eponymous institute at the Reich Health Office. In December 1943, Gerhard Nauck was appointed administrative director of the RKPA's Forensic Biology Institute.

literature

  • Joachim Hohmann: Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology: "Gypsy research" in National Socialism and in West Germany under the sign of racism , Frankfurt / M. 1991, ISBN 3-631-43984-9 .
  • Michael Zimmermann: Racial Utopia and Genocide: The National Socialist 'Solution to the Gypsy Question' (Hamburg Contributions to Social and Contemporary History, Vol. 33) Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-7672-1270-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The offices of the RSHA, as of December 7, 1943. In: Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on the 'Prinz Albrecht site' - a documentation . Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-922912-21-4 , p. 76.
  2. ↑ Gerhard Hirschfeld, Tobias Jersak: Careers in National Socialism - Functional elites between participation and distance. Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-593-37156-1 , p. 305 / Michael Zimmermann : Rassenutopie und Genozid, p. 155 names seven escape points and Drögen ( Security Police School Drögen ) as the central branch.
  3. ↑ Robert Ritter: The criminal biological institute of the security police. In: Kriminalstik, Heidelberg 16 (1942), p. 117 / quoted from Friedrich Herber: Between forensic medicine and criminal law science - criminology and criminal biology in Berlin. In: Wolfram Fischer (ed.): Exodus of the sciences from Berlin. Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-11-013945-6 , p. 524.
  4. ↑ Michael Zimmermann: Racial Utopia and Genocide: The National Socialist 'Solution to the Gypsy Question' (Hamburg Contributions to Social and Contemporary History, Vol. 33) Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-7672-1270-6 , p. 155.
  5. ↑ Manuela Neugebauer: The way to the youth protection camp Moringen: a development policy analysis of National Socialist youth policy (=  series of publications of the German Association for Juvenile Courts and Juvenile Court Assistance eV Volume 28 ). Forum-Verlag Godesberg, Mönchengladbach 1997, ISBN 3-930982-11-0 , p. 30 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  6. ↑ Imanuel Baumann: On the trail of crime - A history of criminology and criminal policy in Germany from 1880 to 1980. Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0008-3 , p. 111.
  7. ↑ The drafts for a community alien law are printed by: Wolfgang Ayaß (edit.): "Community aliens". Sources on the persecution of "anti-social" 1933–1945 , Koblenz 1998.
  8. ↑ Andrea Elisabeth Sebald: The criminal biologist Franz Exner (1881-1947). Frankfurt am Main 2008, ISBN 978-3-631-57975-6 , p. 208.
  9. ↑ Norbert Frei: The Führer State. National Socialist rule 1933 to 1945 , Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-64449-8 , p. 252.
  10. ↑ Michael Zimmermann: Rassenutopie und Genozid, p. 154.
  11. ↑ Michael Zimmermann: Rassenutopie und Genozid, pp. 139/140.
  12. ^ Michael Zimmermann: Racial Utopia and Genocide. P. 154.
  13. ↑ Gerhard Hirschfeld, Tobias Jersak: Careers in National Socialism - Functional elites between participation and distance. Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-593-37156-1 , p. 305.
  14. ↑ Joachim Stephan Hohmann: Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1991, p. 69 (Studies on Tsiganology and Folklore Studies, Volume 4, pp. 69-70).