Kurt Strauss

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Kurt Strauss (born February 7, 1901 in Berlin ; † September 8, 1944 ) was a German surgeon and professor at the Karl Ferdinand University in Prague.

Life

Strauss was the son of the factory owner Hugo Strauss and studied medicine in Berlin after graduating from high school in 1919. After the state examination and doctorate in 1925 and the license to practice medicine in 1926, four years of specialist training in anatomy and pathology followed. In 1932 he became a specialist in surgery. Strauss was a Freikorps fighter (1918/19 fights in Posen, 1921 with the Heinz Freikorps in Upper Silesia) and took part in the Kapp Putsch in Berlin. Since 1930 he belonged to the National Socialist German Medical Association . Since 1931 a member of the NSDAP (membership number 892.671), he became leader of the National Socialist assistant doctors in 1931/32 . In the SS , to which he had been an SS standard doctor since 1931, he achieved the rank of Sturmbannführer in 1934 . In 1933 he became Reichsleiter of the Association of Employed Doctors and Pharmacists, was a member of the NSDAP Reich leadership from 1934 and was a Gestapo doctor from 1934 . In 1933 he became senior physician at the Moabit Hospital (3rd Surgical University Polyclinic) and completed his habilitation with Ferdinand Sauerbruch . In 1933, in SS uniform, he is said to have expelled the remaining Jewish surgeons from the clinic and made himself senior physician there. He also selected the new head physician in his department, Martin Baetzner. Thereafter, the mortality from biliary and appendix operations rose sharply. From 1937 he himself held the position of director of the II. Surgical University Clinic in Berlin, after he had overthrown Baetzner by an intrigue (he blamed him for a malpractice and brought a lawsuit). He himself was considered an incompetent surgeon. Werner Forßmann , who was a senior physician under him, recalled in his autobiography that Strauss made an incision down to the bone instead of a careful dissection in accordance with the motto "Great surgeons make great incisions" in the case of upper arm fractures and severed the radial nerve several times , which is why several Liability lawsuits were pending against him. But Strauss had the backing of important people such as Robert Ley , Leonardo Conti and Karl Gebhardt . In 1939 he was appointed associate professor in Berlin, but in the same year he accepted an appointment as an associate professor at the German University in Prague as successor to Hermann Schloffer , initially only as a substitute and on revocation, from 1940 as clinic director.

Since under Strauss the mortality after operations had risen sharply (37 patients died in 112 operations he carried out), the dean of the Medical Faculty Hermann Knaus wrote to the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia : “This post-operative mortality exceeds the level that the reputation of the The board of directors of a large operative clinic was able to endure. ” The commission set up to review the allegations, headed by his former teacher Sauerbruch, found“ technical inadequacies ”and, since Strauss had seen this himself, recommended“ further training ”at other clinics, but stopped the increased mortality has not been proven. Strauss declared in writing that he was ready to give up his chair in Prague for life after being appointed full professor. The appointment took place in April 1941.

When appointments to the University of Cologne and the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster failed (even Gauleiter Josef Grohé and Lord Mayor Peter Winkelnkemper spoke out against it), Strauss went to the 16th Army on the Eastern Front and then to the Germans as an advisory surgeon in March 1941 Army mission in Romania . In July 1942 he became the head of a special hospital for injured and occupationally injured persons on the German Labor Front in Vlašim near Prague. There it became intolerable again. Removed from office, demoted and expelled from the SS for infidelity in April 1944 , he committed suicide in the face of a threatened court martial for unworthy treatment of the wounded, misappropriation of food and “criminal conduct of male discipline”.

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Karl Philipp Behrendt: War surgery from 1939 to 1945 from the point of view of the consulting surgeons of the German Army in World War II , Med. Diss. Freiburg im Breisgau, 2003, p. 243
  2. ↑ Werner Forßmann: Self-experiment. Memories of a surgeon , Droste Verlag Düsseldorf 1972
  3. ^ A b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 607.
  4. ^ A b Rüdiger Hachtmann: Science Management in the "Third Reich". History of the general administration of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society . Vol. 2, Göttingen 2007, p. 936 f.
  5. ↑ Karl Philipp Behrendt: The war surgery from 1939 to 1945 from the point of view of the consulting surgeons of the German Army in the Second World War , Med. Diss. Freiburg im Breisgau, 2003, p. 244
personal data
SURNAME Strauss, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 8, 1944