Ludwig Beltz

Ludwig Beltz (born August 19, 1882 in Krefeld , † September 13, 1944 in Aachen ) was a German internist and medical director at the Aachen City Hospitals .

Live and act

Beltz was the son of a hotel owner and studied medicine in Berlin after graduating from high school . After his state examination and doctorate in 1906, he first worked at the Groß-Lichterfelde district hospital , then at the Academy for Practical Medicine in Düsseldorf and from 1908 as an assistant doctor at the Augusta Hospital in Cologne . As a secondary doctor under Franz Külbs, Beltz completed his specialist training as an internist and in 1913 received a teaching position at the Academy for Practical Medicine in Cologne.

After his military service with the rank of medical officer during the First World War , Beltz was taken on as senior physician at the medical clinic of the medical faculty of the newly founded University of Cologne . There he was active from 1919 initially as a private lecturer and after his habilitation from 1922 as an associate professor. He made a name for himself in specialist circles with studies in hematology and neurology . In 1924 Beltz was offered a position at the Aachen City Hospital, where he took over the medical clinic for internal medicine with a total of 300 beds including a children's department as medical director and successor to Felix Wesener . Under his leadership, this area was expanded to become the Clinic for Internal and Nervous Disorders, from which later radiology and in 1941 paediatrics emerged as independent departments.

During the National Socialist era , Beltz carefully came to terms with the regime by joining the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) and the Reich Association of German Officials (RDB) as well as becoming a supporting member of the SS , but beyond that he did not leave the NSDAP was also captured by other organizations. On the contrary, he repeatedly risked his position by circumventing the ban on giving the sick and dying spiritual support or removing crosses from the hospital. Neither Jewish patients nor Polish and Russian slave laborers or other outlawed minorities were disadvantaged in his department. In addition, Beltz showed demonstrative passivity as an expert witness in the context of hereditary health court proceedings, even though numerous nervous patients were treated in his department. In addition, he took a stand with active and articulated resistance to the implementation of compulsory racial hygiene measures by his colleagues. Above all, his colleague and bitter opponent, the medical director of the surgical department Max Krabbel , criticized “ that the lack of participation by the medical clinic is perceived as sabotage in a service to the people, which in his view would prevent infinite suffering. “Beltz also campaigned for the training of Jewish medical students and doctors, such as his long-time assistant doctor and radiologist Richard Herz, who, however, decided in 1938 to emigrate. Beltz's medical reputation and the need to practice were seemingly so convincing that despite the temptations and denunciations, he was not released.

When the residents of Aachen were evacuated in September 1944, the children were initially transferred from Beltz's department to Marienheide , while the other patients were either partially relocated or released early, depending on their health. On September 12th, almost all patients in the city hospitals and most of the senior doctors and nursing staff as well as the civilian population and the authorities were evacuated by a forced evacuation order. Only Beltz stayed in Aachen, as did the radiologist Theodor Möhlmann and the orthopedic surgeon Friedrich Pauwels , because he either refused to be evacuated - which according to the law at the time could have resulted in the death penalty - or according to the order of the Gauleitung, taking into account that “ in the event of eviction Aachen would have to remain suitable personalities who should be responsible for looking after the population after the occupation ”and“ who are not particularly politically prominent, but who have the confidence in the population necessary to carry out their office. “Meanwhile, his wife and five children were staying in an emergency shelter in Olpe and he himself was accommodated in the house of his friend, businessman Hubert Krantz in Aachen, after his city apartment was no longer habitable due to the destruction. When Beltz wanted to leave the house on the morning of September 13, 1944, to get to the hospital, he was hit and fatally wounded by an artillery shell from the approaching American tanks.

Ludwig Beltz found his final resting place in the Aachen forest cemetery . Posthumously, a street on the former site of the city hospitals in the immediate vicinity of the Hangeweiher was named "Professor-Beltz-Weg" in his honor .

The photographer Martha Rosenfeld created a portrait of Ludwig Beltz, which, along with 60 other photos of well-known Aachen personalities, was exhibited in the Suermondt Museum in 1927 .

literature

• Richard Kühl: Leading clinic doctors in Aachen and their role in the Third Reich , study by the Aachen Competence Center for the History of Science, Volume 11, Ed .: Dominik Groß, Diss. RWTH Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-014-0 pdf
• Axel Hinrich Murken: Medical Resistance in Dark Times , in: Deutsches Ärzteblatt , vol. 101, issue 37, from September 10, 2004 pdf
• Karl Boventer: Memories of Professor Dr. med. Ludwig Beltz , in: Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichtsverein (ZAGV) 94/95, 1987/88, pp. 440–462