Max Krabbel

Max Krabbel (born May 14, 1887 in Witten , † October 17, 1961 in Baden-Baden ) was a German surgeon and medical director. He was considered a staunch advocate of eugenics .

family

Max Krabbel came from a strictly Catholic family and was the son of the Aachen physician and medical adviser Heinrich Krabbel (1850-1918), chief physician of the surgical department of the Maria-Hilf Hospital in Aachen, and Emile, nee Greve from Bochum (1858-1926) . Two of his sisters were church and socially committed women: Gerta Krabbel (1881–1961) was long-time chairwoman and later honorary chairwoman of the Catholic German Women's Association , her younger sister Emilie (Niny), married Imdahl (1889–1969), was also a member and honorary member there of the International Bruckner Society . She was also the mother of the later art historian Max Imdahl .

Live and act

After graduating from the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium in Aachen, Krabbel studied medicine from 1905 at the universities of Freiburg im Breisgau , Berlin and finally in Bonn , where he passed his state examination in 1910. He then completed his practical year in the surgical department of the Aachen City Hospitals, which emerged from the Maria-Hilf-Hospital and where his father worked as chief physician. There Max Krabbel obtained his license to practice medicine in 1911 and received his doctorate a year later with the dissertation: " Treatment of tetania parathyreopriva with overplantation of epithelial bodies ".

Subsequently, from 1912 to 1918, Krabbel completed his specialist training as a surgeon at the Johannis Hospital in Bonn, where he initially worked as an assistant doctor and later as a senior physician under Carl Garrè . In the meantime, during the First World War, he was first employed in a Bonn hospital and finally in an Aachen hospital and was awarded the Iron Cross of the II and I classes.

After completing his specialist training, Krabbel took over the position of chief physician in the surgical department at the Aachen- Forst hospital , where he was appointed managing director in 1924. In 1932 he followed a call to the municipal hospitals in Aachen, where he was transferred to the position of chief physician at the surgical clinic, which his father had held until 1918.

During the National Socialist era , Krabbel was involved in several NS organizations and in 1937 became a member of the NSDAP and a supporting member of the SS as well as a member of the National Socialist People's Welfare , the NS Medical Association , the Reich Association of German Civil Servants and the Reich Air Protection Association . In addition, he was a member and temporary chairman of the Aachen Medical Association and until 1938 a member of the Catholic Academic Association .

As early as 1927 and during his time at the Forster Hospital, Krabbel commented in his essay " Release for the destruction of life unworthy of life " on the 1920 text “The release of destruction of life unworthy of life ” by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding . After the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring came into force in 1934, he was one of the doctors at the Aachen hospitals who were authorized to carry out forced sterilizations . In an essay entitled: “ Experiences with Sterilization Operations ”, which appeared in the specialist journal “ Die Medizinische Welt ” in 1935 , he confirmed that he was open to the surgical methods of sterilizing people with legally defined hereditary diseases and pointed out that he carried out a total of 98 sterilizations between 1934 and 1935 alone. Due to his experience and the supposedly low complication rate, it was his concern in this article to reduce the concerns of his specialist colleagues and to make it easier for them to perform sterilization. As indications, he named among other things "innate nonsense", "genuine epilepsy" and "schizophrenia" as well as so-called "character anomalies" such as alcoholism, prostitution and crime. He was firmly convinced that the Hereditary Health Act "prevents an infinite amount of suffering and misfortune".

On the other hand, Krabbel clearly disassociated himself from the endeavor to target terminally ill patients in the context of Action T4 , as this contradicts the ethos of the medical profession, namely the healing of sick people, and he took the view that this group of people should be treated palliatively . He referred to his above-mentioned family-influenced Catholic attitude and was convinced that “the spiritual attitude of the Catholic Church” towards euthanasia “precludes an assessment in the positive sense”.

In addition, Krabbel, in the sense of radical eugenics, advocated the thesis that in addition to compulsory sterilization, asylum and incapacitation could also be a possibility of control. In addition, he campaigned for a greater number of children on the part of the higher classes while at the same time restricting births in the lower social classes in order to prevent the people from being led one day by "proletarian upstarts".

During his entire tenure at the Aachen City Hospital, Krabbel was one of the most active representatives of radical eugenics of his time. At the beginning of the Second World War he was promoted to senior medical officer in February 1940 and drafted into military service three months later. He initially performed his service in the reserve hospital in Aachen, where he was promoted to senior staff doctor in 1943 and was employed as a consulting surgeon in military district VI (Westphalia) from 1944 . At the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the British and was ordered to be used in the Wittekindshof reserve hospitals near Bad Oeynhausen and Gütersloh . At the same time, he had to face a denazification process and was finally classified in Category IV - Followers .

After that, Krabbel was able to continue his career unhindered and initially headed the “Prisoner of War Hospital” in Gütersloh until April 1947 and was then appointed head of the Schloss Rheinblick hospital in Bad Godesberg . After retiring in 1952, he spent the rest of his life with his family in the Baden-Baden area, where he was killed in a car accident on October 17, 1961.

Max Krabbel was married to Maria Thier (1890–1962), daughter of the ophthalmologist and medical adviser Carl Thier (1858–1931). The couple had four sons and two daughters, all of whom became members of either the Hitler Youth , the German Young People or the Association of German Girls, and occasionally later members of the NSDAP. Two of the sons as well as a daughter-in-law and a grandson were killed in World War II, and one son suffered serious war injuries.

Fonts

During his career, Krabbel wrote a considerable number of medical articles that appeared in the various specialist organs and that cover the entire spectrum of visceral surgery and, in some cases, topics in radiological fields. This also includes a number of publications on eugenics, sterilization techniques and euthanasia.

literature

• Richard Kühl: Leading Aachen clinicians 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 )
• Carola Döbber: Political chief physicians? New studies on the Aachen medical profession in the 20th century . Study by the Aachen Competence Center for the History of Science, Volume 14, Ed .: Dominik Groß, Diss. RWTH Aachen 2012, pp. 23–36, ISBN 978-3-86219-338-7 ( pdf )

Web links

• Arthur Hübner (Ed.): Surgeons Directory , 4th Edition, Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 1958, p. 450

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Death note with obituary Heinrich Krabbel
2. ↑ Death note Emilie Imdahl
3. ↑ Axel Borrenkott: What Aachen chief physicians did in the Third Reich , in: Aachener Zeitung of December 7, 2009
4. ↑ Axel Borrenkott: Aachen was a collecting basin for Nazi doctors , in Aachener Zeitung of January 11, 2011
5. ↑ Death note with obituary Max Krabbel
6. ↑ see source Carola Döbber; Pp. 121-123, No. 144-188 .