Kurt Heissmeyer

Kurt Heissmeyer (born December 26, 1905 in Lamspringe , † August 29, 1967 in Bautzen ) was a German doctor in the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg .

Life

Kurt Heissmeyer studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau and Marburg , where he joined the Arminia Marburg fraternity in 1926 . After his exams he was an assistant doctor in a lung sanatorium in Davos and at the Berlin Auguste Viktoria Hospital . Since 1938 he worked as a senior physician in the Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Hohenlychen of Karl Gebhardt .

He had good relations with the SS , as he was friends with Oswald Pohl , a general in the Waffen SS . Through his post in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office of the SS, he was responsible for concentration camps. His uncle, August Heissmeyer , was also a general of the Waffen SS. This explains his later career in Neuengamme. In order to be able to realize his dream of a professorship, Heißmeyer wanted to present scientific results that went beyond his previous publications. So he turned to the Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti . He wanted to conduct experiments on tuberculosis in order to develop a more effective control. He took the hypothesis that tuberculosis could be cured by a second infection in the form of a vaccination . This opinion had already been refuted at the time, which he did not know because he had not dealt with the matter in detail.

Human experiments in the Neuengamme concentration camp

To save time, experiment on people right away . Hotmeyer began with these experiments in April 1944 in the Neuengamme concentration camp . A barrack was set up there, which was called "Sonderabteilung Heißmeyer". The experiments were carried out first on adults and later on children. The tuberculosis pathogen was used for this, with which Heißmeyer accepted the killing of the test subjects. In order to keep the experiments secret, the barracks were sealed off and their own prison staff were used. 30 Russians, who had volunteered because of the better food, were selected for the experiments. They were not informed of what was happening to them. Four of the prisoners were then hanged and dissected by Heissmeyer.

Heissmeyer decided to request 20 Jewish children from Auschwitz . The children arrived in Neuengamme on November 29, 1944. He infected them partly intradermally , partly with a lung tube with Mycobacterium tuberculosis and then had their axillary lymph nodes removed.

When the British troops had already reached the Hamburg city ​​area, Heissmeyer was ordered on April 20 to kill all children and carers in order to destroy traces. On the night of April 21, 1945, they were picked up in Neuengamme and taken to Spaldingstrasse in Hamburg, and later to the school on Bullenhuser Damm . They were injected with morphine and then hanged in the school basement, along with their carers. According to the historian Joachim Lietzke, the thesis of the “gracious” morphine injections mentioned in this context is an unproven protective claim .

The events in the school on Bullenhuser Damm were later negotiated during the Curiohaus trials . Streets in Hamburg were named after the names of the children killed, including Eduard Reichenbaum .

After the war

Despite investigations against SS doctors, no arrest warrant was issued against Heissmeyer. He returned to his parents' house and worked in his father's practice in Sandersleben . Feeling safe, he opened the only private tuberculosis practice in the GDR under its real name in Gellertstrasse in Magdeburg and became director of the private Magdeburg Clinic of the West .

In 1959 he accidentally became aware of him through an article in the magazine Stern . But he was not arrested until December 13, 1963.

After the end of the war , he had buried a box in Hohenlychen in which, in addition to personal materials, his work and image documents were hidden. When it was found in the Berlin Charité that these documents did not exonerate him, he confessed. After two and a half years of pre-trial detention, the trial against Heißmeyer was opened before the Magdeburg District Court on June 21, 1966, in which the lawyer Wolfgang Vogel defended him. Heissmeyer was charged with crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison on June 30, 1966 . He served the sentence in Bautzen . After a year, he died there of a heart attack .

Because of his actions, the Arminia Marburg fraternity posthumously excluded Kurt Heissmeyer from the student union in mid-2001.

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 7: Supplement A – K. Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 , pp. 445-446.
• Paulus Hochgatterer : Helene, Mio and Death . In: Cats, Bodies, Button War . A poetics of childhood, speeches, essays, lectures. Essays. Deuticke, Vienna / Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 978-3-552-06182-8
• Wolfgang Schulz: Heissmeyer, Kurt. In: Guido Heinrich, Gunter Schandera (ed.): Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon 19th and 20th centuries. Biographical lexicon for the state capital Magdeburg and the districts of Bördekreis, Jerichower Land, Ohrekreis and Schönebeck. Scriptum, Magdeburg 2002, ISBN 3-933046-49-1 , p. 284.
• Günther Schwarberg : The SS doctor and the children. Report on the Bullenhuser Damm murder Documentation: Daniel Haller. Edited by Henri Nannen . 2 volumes. Gruner and Jahr, Hamburg 1979, ISBN 3-570-02940-9 ; 1980 Documentation and teaching aid, awarded the Anne Frank Prize in 1988. Frequent new editions, most recently under the title: The SS doctor and the children from Bullenhuser Damm . Steidl-TB 37, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 978-3-88243-306-7 (numerous translations: English, Italian, Romanian, Polish).
• Günther Schwarberg, Reinhard Bockhofer, Bruni Eisele: Twenty children - when human dignity no longer counts . Three plays for Days of Remembrance of the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship against humanity. For youth theater, youth work and school. Donat, Bremen 2000, ISBN 978-3-931737-97-9 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Heissmeyer in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Publications Heißmeyers: As part of his dissertation:
   • Kurt Heissmeyer: Investigations into the changes in the blood poured into body cavities . In: German journal for surgery . tape 231 , no. 2-4 . Springer, April 1931, ISSN  0367-0023 , p. 227-236 , doi : 10.1007 / BF02795638 ( springer.com ).
   • Kurt Heissmeyer: Investigations into the changes in the blood poured into body cavities . Med. Dissertation Freiburg i. B. 1938. Vogel, Berlin 1931, DNB  570697948 .
   As medical director (internal senior physician) of the lung department of the Hohenlychen sanatorium:
   • Kurt Heissmeyer: Fundamental to the task area of ​​the subsequent care in the fight against tuberculosis . In: DMW - German Medical Weekly . tape 69 , no. 33/34 . Thieme, August 1943, ISSN  0012-0472 , p. 598-600 , doi : 10.1055 / s-0028-1124156 ( thieme-connect.de ).
   • Kurt Heissmeyer: Limits and possibilities of sanatorium work treatment for tuberculous people . In: DMW - German Medical Weekly . tape 69 , no. 35/36 . Thieme, September 1943, ISSN  0012-0472 , p. 635-636 , doi : 10.1055 / s-0028-1124169 ( thieme-connect.de ).
   • Kurt Heissmeyer: Experience of joint works service treatment of tuberculous and non-tuberculous people in Hohenlychen . In: DMW - German Medical Weekly . tape 69 , no. 37/38 . Thieme, September 1943, ISSN  0012-0472 , p. 667-669 , doi : 10.1055 / s-0028-1124178 ( thieme-connect.de ).
2. ↑ Joachim Lietzke, quoted in: Thomas Frankenfeld: "Something diabolical has happened here". In: Hamburger Abendblatt . April 22, 2013, p. 11 , accessed April 21, 2020 . 
3. ^ Declaration Burschenschaft Arminia to Kurt Heissmeyer Declaration of the Executive Committee, decided at the Federal Convention for the Foundation Festival on June 3, 2001.