Michael Hesch

Michael Hesch (born September 13, 1893 in Waltersdorf , Transylvania , † 1979 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German ethnologist and anthropologist .

Live and act

Michael Hesch was born in 1893 as the son of a Transylvanian peasant couple with Hungarian citizenship. After attending school, which he graduated from high school in 1912, Hesch studied philosophy as well as zoology, botany, mineralogy and geography at the universities of Leipzig , Kiel , Budapest and Vienna . During his studies in Vienna, Hesch was introduced to anthropology by Rudolf Pöch . In this context, he was able to carry out skull measurements (on prisoners of war) for the first time in the summer of 1915. After the state examination, which he passed in Budapest in 1916, he was employed as a trial candidate at a German boys' bourgeois school in Transylvania. After this school was closed in 1917, Hesch went to a secondary school in Budapest as a student trainee.

Due to his dissatisfaction with the profession of teacher, Hesch returned to Vienna in 1918 to resume studying anthropology. These studies ultimately led to his employment as a research assistant at the Vienna Institute for Anthropology and Ethnography.

After the end of the First World War and the collapse of the Habsburg dual monarchy, Hesch became an Austrian citizen. His studies finally came to an end in 1921 - after a semester abroad at the Swedish University of Uppsala - he submitted his doctorate, which he wrote under Pöch on the subject of anthropology.

When Otto Reche was appointed director of the Institute for Anthropology in Vienna, he hired Hesch as a research assistant in 1924. In this capacity, Hesch participated in the founding of the German Society for Blood Group Research in 1926 . In 1927 Hesch Reche followed to Leipzig, where he had been called to continue to function as his assistant. In 1932, Hesch took on German citizenship and became chief editor of the Society for Eugenics in Leipzig, which was founded in the same year .

In 1933, Hesch joined the NSDAP . He became involved in party politics by taking on the role of specialist advisor for race in the cultural and political department of the NSDAP district leadership in Leipzig. In January 1934, Hesch became a candidate for the SS (No. 266.928), where he made a modest career: on March 18, 1935 he became an SS man, on September 15, 1935 he was promoted to SS-Sturmmann, on March 20, 1935 January 1936 he became SS-Rottenführer and on September 11th 1938 SS-Unterscharführer. In 1938, Hesch moved from Leipzig to Dresden to take over the anthropological department of the State Museum for Animal Science and Ethnology . In the following year he completed his habilitation at the city's technical university . In November 1938, Hesch became a volunteer employee in the Race Office at the Race and Settlement Main Office of the SS (RuSHA). In 1939 he also took on the role of co-editor of the magazine Kultur und Rasse . In the winter of 1940 Hesch was commissioned to evaluate the “racial research results” on the ethnic Germans from Volhynia and Galicia. In September 1941 he took over the management of the State Museums for Animal Science and Ethnology in Dresden.

In October 1942, Hesch became an official employee of the SS Race Office in the Race and Settlement Main Office. He was the head of a branch of the Bohemia-Moravia branch, Prague, and worked as a teacher for proficiency testing courses. The "suitability testers" trained by him decided on the so-called "Germanization" of Polish children and on abortions among female forced laborers on the basis of the appearance, known as the "race value", namely whether the expected child represented a desired or undesired increase . In 1943 he became head of the Königgrätz, Pardubitz and Witzing branches. On May 1, 1943, Hesch was appointed SS-Hauptsturmführer, specialist group Race and Settlement, and in the following month took over the management of the Sudeten office of the RuSHA, Bohemia-Moravia branch. In 1944, Hesch received an extraordinary professorship at the Technical University in Dresden.

In the post-war period, Hesch was a full member of the Anthropological Society in Vienna. He also prepared hereditary parentage reports as an expert.

Hesch spent the last years of his life with his wife in Bad Reichenhall.

Fonts

• Latvians , 1926.
• Latvians, Lithuanians, Belarusians. A reflection on the anthropology of the East Baltic , 1933.
• The race and health passport as proof of hereditary health , 1933. (together with Alfred Eydt)
• Dissemination of knowledge about race and race care (race hygiene) , 1933.
• Race and Health Passport , 1934.
• The racial structure of the German people , (= " Hillgers Deutsche Bücherei "), Berlin 1935.
• Racial identification tables for eye, hair and skin colors , 1935. (together with Bruno Kurt Schultz)
• Culture and race. Dedicated to Otto Reche on the occasion of his 60th birthday , Munich 1939. (together with Günther Spannaus)

literature

• Isabel Heinemann: "Race, settlement, German blood" The race and settlement main office of the SS. Wallstein, Göttingen 1999 ISBN 3892446237

Web link

• Literature by and about Michael Hesch in the catalog of the German National Library

proof

1. ↑ Nuremberg Trials, Doc. NO-5110, testimony of July 8, 1947 by one of the parties, Rödel; further references in Heinemann, p. 504 note 99