Otmar von Verschuer

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Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer (born July 16, 1896 in Richelsdorfer Hütte ; † August 8, 1969 in Münster in Westphalia ) was a German physician , human geneticist , twin researcher and eugenicist . Verschuer was one of the leading eugenicists in the era of National Socialism . One of his doctoral students was Josef Mengele .

Life

Parental home, school, start of studies

Otmar von Verschuer was the child of the mining entrepreneur and businessman Hans von Verschuer and his wife Charlotte, nee. from Arnold. After 1873, Hans von Verschuer and a business partner acquired the Richelsdorfer Hütte in Wildeck , and in 1913 it was sold. After attending the community school in Wolfach until 1909 and the upper secondary school in Karlsruhe (today Helmholtz-Gymnasium Karlsruhe ), he passed his Abitur there in 1914 . During his school days he developed an interest in "exact science". He enrolled for the winter semester of 1914/15 in law at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . The membership in the Wandervogel , the noble origins and the reading of the writings of Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlains led him to questions of heredity and race theory.

First World War

Verschuer joined the Fusilier Regiment 80 as a flag junior in August 1914 , in which his father had been an officer. In the course of the war he served on the western and eastern fronts , was wounded three times and was awarded the Iron Cross II and I Class as well as the Order of the Zähringer Lion and the Wound Badge in silver. At the end of the war, Verschuer was first lieutenant . He returned to his family at Christmas 1918.

Weimar Republic

From 1919 Verschuer studied medicine at the Philipps University in Marburg . He was incorporated in the local VDSt . He also organized himself in the student corps Marburg (StuKoMa) of Bogislav von Selchow . As the right-hand man and first adjutant of Selchow, Verschuer led the StuKoMa battalion to an on-site mission in Thuringia in March 1920 as part of the Kapp Putsch .

In Mechterstädt , on the morning of March 25, 1920, fifteen people - including four municipal councilors - were selected by the student corps from a list of 40 suspects and arrested. They were accused of being “red” insurgents against the state order that was gradually restored after the Kapp Putsch. The 15 arrested were allegedly shot while trying to escape. These events went down in history as the Mechterstädt murders . Because of the public outrage about the murders at the time, the students directly involved were charged with murder and brought before military courts. Two different main proceedings each ended in an acquittal.

In Marburg "the ground underfoot" became too hot for Verschuer, so that he and his friend Karl Diehl moved to the University of Hamburg and from there to Munich, where he finished his studies. Here he became a member of the Association of German Students in Munich. In the winter semester of 1921/1922 he was a guest at the University of Freiburg, where he met his future mentor Eugen Fischer . Verschuer was awarded a Dr. med. PhD .

In 1923 Verschuer began at the medical outpatient clinic of the University of Tübingen as an assistant to Wilhelm Weitz , who introduced him to his specialty, genetic research with twins. At the beginning of 1927 he qualified as a professor in Tübingen for hereditary studies with the text The Hereditary Biological Twin Research and worked there as a private lecturer . At the beginning of October 1927 he went to the newly founded Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem , with Eugen Fischer as director , where he worked as head of the department for human heredity . In 1929/30 he and the two other department heads of the KWI for anthropology: Fischer (anthropology) and Hermann Muckermann (eugenics) gave more than 200 lectures on racial hygiene.

In 1928, at the request of the Zeitschrift für Nationalwirtschaft , whose co-editors Erich Jung , Friedrich Lent and Max Wundt , he published an article on the relationship between social policy and racial hygiene, based on the ideas of the Austrian right-wing extremist Othmar Spann .

time of the nationalsocialism

At the University of Berlin in 1933 Verschuer became a part-time associate professor for anthropology, human heredity and eugenics. In June 1933 the German Society for Racial Hygiene was nationalized, Verschuer as well as the other board members from the KWI in Berlin had to resign and were replaced by Ernst Rüdin as Reich Commissioner appointed by Wilhelm Frick . In May 1933, an "Advisory Council on Population and Race Policy at the Reich Minister of the Interior" was founded, whose task was also to draft a sterilization law. For the implementation of the resulting law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring of July 14, 1933, Fischer and Fritz Lenz as well as Verschuer were asked to contribute his expertise. The sociologists of knowledge Kurt Bayertz , Jürgen Kroll and Peter Weingart describe the new situation as follows: The seizure of power offered the promise of the professionalization of racial hygiene at the price of dependence on political control, which was not a high price given the ideological affinity. In 1936 he became a judge at the Charlottenburg Hereditary Health Court .

From 1934 until 1939 as a supplement to the Deutsches Ärzteblatt , his magazine Der Erbarzt appeared . In it "results of genetic research" were communicated to the free practicing German medical profession.

Professorship in Frankfurt (1935–1942)

In 1935, Verschuer moved to the newly founded University Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt am Main , which he directed, prompting him to make the following contribution in his magazine Der Erbarzt : He paid homage to the “Führer of the German Reich”, who was the first statesman to “gain knowledge who made hereditary biology and racial hygiene a guiding principle of governance ”. Verschuer's department for “Human Heredity” at the KWI was dissolved after his departure, parts of which were taken over by Fischer and Fritz Lenz , and he was appointed an external member. Verschuer contributed to the journal for human inheritance and constitutional theory published by Günther Just and Karl Heinrich Bauer from 1935 onwards .

In 1936 Verschuer was appointed professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main .

From 1936 to 1938 Gerhart Stein , an active student in the SA , was one of Verschuer's doctoral students. He did his doctorate on Roma , which he examined above all in the forced camp for " Gypsies " in Berlin-Marzahn . Before submitting his thesis, Stein worked for the Racial Hygiene Research Center . Josef Mengele , who had belonged to Verschuer's institute since January 1937, received his doctorate in 1938 with genealogical studies on cleft lip and palate . He tried to prove their heredity statistically.

As early as 1936, Verschuer was a biology specialist on the advisory board of the Research Department on Jewish Issues at the Reich Institute for the History of New Germany ; from 1938 he was on its advisory board and provided parentage reports .

In a speech at the university about "Racial hygiene as a science and a state task", Verschuer said:

"The state of Adolf Hitler, which for the first time effectively carried out the cultivation of inheritance and race, is at the same time a state that has taken the education of the people into its own hands like no other state"

As editor of the journal Der Erbarzt he wrote in the leading article in January 1940:

"The united peoples led with us recognize more and more that the Jewish question is a racial question and that it must therefore find a solution, as it was first initiated by us for Germany."

In 1940 Verschuer joined the NSDAP and became co-editor and co-author of the three-volume new edition of the textbook Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene , the so-called Baur / Fischer / Lenz, of which only Volume I, 2nd half, Hereditary Pathology , appeared in 1940 . As the successor to Eugen Fischer, from October 1942 to 1948, Verschuer was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics, as well as an expert in biology in the research department of the Rosenberg office on Jewish issues . Verschuer advocated a "card index of those unable to cope [...] so that asociolity could be fought with all available means". In 1941 he was an invited guest at the opening of Alfred Rosenberg's Institute for Research into the Jewish Question , which was the first institution of a planned high school of the NSDAP in Frankfurt am Main. At the end of 1942, Verschuer was appointed to the advisory board of the newly founded Society for Constitutional Research. In 1943 Verschuer became an honorary professor in Berlin, where he was accepted into the scientific advisory board of the General Commissioner for Sanitary and Health Care Karl Brandt in 1944 .

In September 1939, four of Verschuer's six Frankfurt assistants ( Heinrich Schade , Hans Grebe , Kahler, Fromme) were called up; Mengele became SS-Unterscharfuhrer at the immigration headquarters in Lodz in August 1940. Only his assistant Eleonore Liebenam remained.

As successor to Fischer KWI director (from 1942)

Memorial plaque on the building of the former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology - human heredity and eugenics, Verschuer is named as the perpetrator

With funds from the DFG , Verschuer continued research projects in Berlin that he had started in Frankfurt. He used the reputation of the KWI and the support of the Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti and Hitler's attendant Karl Brandt .

During his time in Berlin, Verschuer directly or indirectly used the possibilities of the Auschwitz concentration camp for medical and genetic research through employees and former institute employees . In his study “Specific protein bodies”, the blood reaction to infectious diseases was researched. For this purpose Mengele infected people “of different geographical origins” with pathogens in Auschwitz-Birkenau and sent the samples to Verschuer in Berlin. This research was funded by the German Research Foundation, which Verschuer openly reported on the location of the research, the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Verschuer's research assistant Karin Magnussen also cooperated with Mengele. For her research on iris heterochromia , also funded by the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science , Mengele gave her the eyes of murdered Auschwitz prisoners. In January 1945, Verschuer was elected chairman of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory , but could no longer take office.

In February 1945 the KWI was relocated to West Germany, first to Solz near Bebra , and later to Frankfurt am Main.

Post-war period and rehabilitation

In 1946, Verschuer was classified as a "fellow traveler" by a ruling chamber in Frankfurt am Main as part of the denazification process and sentenced to a fine of 600  RM . Robert Havemann , acting head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, protested against this process.

In an affidavit to Otto Hahn , the President of the KWG recognized by the British military government, Verschuer wrote about Josef Mengele on May 10, 1946:

“An assistant from my former Frankfurt institute, Dr. M. ... was assigned to the military hospital of the Auschwitz concentration camp as a doctor against his will; everyone who knew him got to know how unhappy he was about it and how he made tireless attempts to obtain a relieving commando at the front, unfortunately in vain. All that is known about his work is that he tried to be a doctor and helper for the sick. "

He found important helpers in the rehabilitation process, which ended in his professorship in Münster in 1951, in the Protestant church. In 1935 he had joined the parish of Pastor Otto Fricke (1902–1954), who had already belonged to the Confessing Church in 1934 , a Christian opposition movement during the Nazi era. Fricke became head of the Evangelical Relief Organization in Hessen-Nassau and, together with Karl Diehl, established contact with Eugen Gerstenmaier , the director of the Evangelical Relief Organization in Germany, in April 1947 . Gerstenmaier could only help Diehl to get a position. In September 1949, Adolf Butenandt and other professors wrote a “Memorandum concerning Prof. Dr. med. Otmar Frhr. v. Verschuer ”. It formed the basis for Verschuer's rehabilitation and his appointment to Münster. Benno Müller-Hill assumes that Butenandt's involvement in the Verschuer-Mengele connection is likely.

Verschuer was one of the founders of the Mainz Academy of Sciences in 1949 . From 1951 he was a professor of human genetics and the first chair of the newly founded institute for human genetics at the University of Münster , at times also dean of the medical faculty. In 1965 he retired . His successor was a son of the eugenicist Fritz Lenz : Widukind Lenz .

In addition to his teaching activity, Verschuer was chairman of the German Society for Anthropology from 1952 .

In 1961 he was one of the founders of The Mankind Quarterly by the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics, Edinburgh .

Verschuer died in 1969 as a result of a car accident.

A son of Verschuer is the European official Helmut von Verschuer .

Act

Verschuer dealt with the biological laws of inheritance, in particular the inheritance of diseases and anomalies in humans, especially in twin, family and clan research . He showed a particular interest in sterilization.

Verschuer was a "Scientific Member" of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin-Dahlem; the Max Planck Society , the de facto successor to the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, has been coming to terms with its past under international public pressure since 1997. In a speech in 2001, the then President of the Max Planck Society, Hubert Markl , asked for forgiveness from the victims of Nazi crimes that had been committed as part of research at the KWG.

Witness and victim of the "twin research" was z. For example, the survivor Eva Moses Kor , who ran the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Hautee in Indiana ( USA ) in memory of the twins tortured and murdered in Auschwitz.

In 1958, Verschuer was still able to disseminate racial biological ideas unhindered in an “investigation into the vagabond problem” of his specialist colleague Hermann Arnold : “Clan migration” and “discontinuity” keep the group of people examined “from regular work”, which is a “psychological inheritance”.

His last publications were in 1964 the essay The former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Report on the scientific research 1927-1945 and 1966 the book Eugenik. Future generations from the perspective of genetics in the church Luther-Verlag in Witten (Ruhr), whose program otherwise only included theological writings.

Memberships and honors

Publications (selection)

Verschuer wrote 290 publications and was the editor of specialist journals.
Selection:

  • with Karl Diehl: twin tuberculosis, twin research and hereditary tuberculosis disposition. Jena 1933.
  • The Erbarzt magazine. DNB 010698817 . Edited on behalf of the German Medical Association and Association of Doctors in Germany No. 1, 1934 to No. 12, 1944. As a supplement to Deutsches Ärzteblatt in issues 1/1934 - 6/1939
    • Reprint from Der Erbarzt. Johannes Seidl, On the genetic biology and clinic of tuberous sclerosis. Thieme, Leipzig 1940.
  • Hereditary biological knowledge to justify the German population and race policy. In: Eugen Gerstenmaier (Ed.): Church, People and State. Voices from the German Evangelical Church on the Oxford World Church Conference. Furche-Verlag, Berlin 1937, pp. 63-75.
  • A card index for those who are incapable of community. In: Der Erbarzt. Volume 8, 1940, p. 235.
  • Professor Ludwig Schmidt-Kehl liked it. In: The Hereditary Doctor. Volume 9, 1941, p. 284.
  • Racial Biology of the Jews . In: Research on the Jewish question , Vol. 3, 2nd edition, Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt 1943, pp. 139–154.
  • Eugene Fischer. The old master of anthropology, the pioneer of human genetics, the founder of anthropobiology. In: Hans Schwerte , Wilhelm Spengler (ed.): Researchers and scientists in Europe today. Explorers of life: physicians, biologists, anthropologists. (= Creators of our time. Volume 4). Stalling, Oldenburg 1955, pp. 317-324.
  • Hereditary pathology. A textbook for doctors and medical students. 2. new. Edition series: Medical Practice, 18. Theodor Steinkopff, Dresden 1937 (first 1934). In it chapter 1: The mineral physician in the national state.

literature

  • Udo Benzenhöfer (ed.): Mengele, Hirt, Holfelder, Berner, von Verschuer, Kranz: Frankfurt university doctors of the Nazi era. Klemm & Oelschlägel Verlag, Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-932577-97-0 .
  • Peter Degen: Racial Hygienist Otmar von Verschuer, the Confessing Church, and comparative reflections on postwar rehabilitation. In: Jing Bao Nie u. a .: Japan's Wartime Medical Atrocities. Routledge & Kegan, London 2010. pp. 155-165.
  • Gerhard Koch: Human genetics and neuro-psychiatry in my time (1932–1978). Years of decision. Palm & Enke Verlag, Erlangen 1993, ISBN 3-7896-0223-X . (Students and employees of V.)
  • Hans-Peter Kröner: From Racial Hygiene to Human Genetics. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics after the war. (Medicine in History and Culture Series, 20). Gustav Fischer, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-437-21228-1 .
  • Hans-Peter Kröner: Verschuer, Otmar Freiherr von. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1440.
  • Benno Müller-Hill : Deadly Science. The singling out of Jews, Gypsies and the mentally ill 1933–1945 . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1984.
  • Jürgen Peter: The breach of racial hygiene in medicine. Effects of racial hygiene on thought collectives and medical fields from 1918 to 1934. Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-935964-33-1 .
  • Gretchen Engle Creates: From Racism to Genocide. Anthropology in the Third Reich. UP of University of Illinois, Champaign IL 2004, ISBN 0-252-02930-5 . (Verschuer passim ; English; also online, detailed index)
  • Hans-Walter Schmuhl : Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927–1945. (History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism, Volume 9). Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-799-3 .
  • Dietmar Schulze: Investigations into the Frankfurt partial estate of the racial hygienist Prof. Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer . Klemm 2008, ISBN 978-3-932577-92-5 .
  • Peter Weingart, Jürgen Kroll, Kurt Bayertz: Race, Blood and Genes. History of eugenics and racial hygiene in Germany. 3. Edition. Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 3-518-28622-6 .
  • Sheila Faith Weiss: After the Fall. Political Whitewashing, Professional Posturing, and personal Refashioning in the Postwar Career of Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. In: Isis , Vol. 101 (2010), No. 4, pp. 722-758.
  • Sheila F. Weiss:  Verschuer, Otmar Reinhold Ralph Ernst Freiherr von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-428-11207-5 , pp. 768-770 ( digitized version ).
  • Ludger Weß : Human genetics between science and racial ideology. The example OvV 1896-1969. In: Karsten Linne, Thomas Wohlleben (ed.): Patient history. For Karl Heinz Roth . 2001-Verlag , Frankfurt 1993, ISBN 3-86150-015-9 , pp. 166-184. (Biography, archive materials)
  • Marc Zirlewagen:  Verschuer, Otmar Frhr. v .. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 27, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-393-2 , Sp. 1437-1447.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Films, film contributions

  • Gerolf Karwath: Hitler's elite after 1945. Part 1: Doctors - Medicine without a conscience. Director: Holger Hillesheim. Südwestrundfunk (SWR, 2002).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Richelsdorfer Hütte & its history. from: richelsdorf.de , accessed on May 21, 2013.
  2. ^ Report on Verschuer in: Der Kinzigtäler , April 5, 1934
  3. ^ A b Marion Weber, Karin Weisemann: Science and Responsibility, illustrated using the example of the human geneticist PJ Waardenburg and O. Frhr. from Verschuer. In: Medical History Journal. Vol. 24, H. 1/2 (1989), pp. 163-172, here 167.
  4. ^ Excerpt from the German lists of losses (Preuss. 70) of November 6, 1914, p. 2311.
  5. ↑ Jessica Hoffmann, Anja Megel, Robert Parzer, Helena Seidel (eds.): Dahlemer Memories. Frank & Timme, 2007, p. 184.
  6. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl : Crossing borders . Wallstein Verlag, 2005, p. 71.
  7. ↑ Louis Lange (Ed.): Kyffhäuser Association of German Student Associations. Address book 1931. Berlin 1931, p. 233.
  8. ^ Mathias Kotowski: The public university. Event culture at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in the Weimar Republic , Stuttgart 1999, p. 188.
  9. ↑ Benoît Massin: Mengele, twin research and the "Auschwitz-Dahlem Connection". In: Carola Sachse (ed.): The connection to Auschwitz. Life sciences and human experiments at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes. Documentation of a symposium. Göttingen 2003, p. 204.
  10. ↑ Weingart: Race, Blood and Genes. P. 215.
  11. ^ O. Freiherr von Verschuer: The former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics: Report on Scientific Research 1927–1945. In: Journal of Morphology and Anthropology. Vol. 55, H. 2 (1964), Eugen Fischer on completion of the 90th year of life on June 5, 1964. pp. 127–174, here p. 158.
  12. ^ Anikó Szabó: Expulsion, return, reparation. Göttingen university professor in the shadow of National Socialism, with biographical documentation of the dismissed and persecuted university professors: University of Göttingen - TH Braunschweig - TH Hannover - University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Wallstein, Göttingen 2000, p. 177, ISBN 978-3-89244-381-0 (= publications of the working group history of Lower Saxony (after 1945), volume 15, also dissertation at the University of Hanover 1998).
  13. ↑ Weingart: Race, Blood and Genes. P. 399.
  14. ↑ Weingart: Race, Blood and Genes. P. 407 f.
  15. ↑ Weingart: Race, Blood and Genes. P. 408.
  16. ↑ a b Klee after Anne Cottebrune: Hereditary researchers in military service? The German Research Foundation, the Reich Research Council and the conversion of the genetic research funding. In: Medical History Journal. Vol. 40, H. 2 (2005), pp. 141-168, here p. 143.
  17. ↑ Weingart: Race, Blood and Genes. P. 390f.
  18. ↑ Weingart: Race, Blood and Genes. P. 411, p. 244.
  19. ↑ Udo Benzenhöfer: Comments on Josef Mengele's curriculum vitae with special reference to his time in Frankfurt. In: Hessisches Ärzteblatt. 72 (2011), pp. 228-230, 239 f. laekh.de (PDF)
  20. ↑ a b c d e f g Ernst Klee: The personal dictionary for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 639.
  21. ↑ Weingart: Race, Blood and Genes. P. 421.
  22. ↑ Quoted from: Benno Müller-Hill : The Blood of Auschwitz and the Silence of Scholars. In: Doris Kaufmann (Ed.): History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism. Wallstein, ISBN 3-89244-423-4 , p. 191.
  23. ↑ Quoted from: Benno Müller-Hill : The Blood of Auschwitz and the Silence of Scholars. In: Doris Kaufmann (Ed.): History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism. Wallstein, ISBN 3-89244-423-4 , p. 193.
  24. ↑ Irmgard Pinn, Michael Nebelung: From "classic" to current racism in Germany. The image of man in population theory and population policy. Duisburg 1991.
  25. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995 (= Würzburg medical historical research. Supplement 3; also dissertation Würzburg 1995), ISBN 3-88479-932-0 , p. 56.
  26. ↑ Anne Cottebrune: Erbforscher in military service? The German Research Foundation, the Reich Research Council and the conversion of the genetic research funding. In: Medical History Journal. Vol. 40, H. 2 (2005), pp. 141-168, here p. 145. JSTOR 25805393
  27. ↑ Anne Cottebrune: Erbforscher in military service? The German Research Foundation, the Reich Research Council and the conversion of the genetic research funding. In: Medical History Journal. Vol. 40, H. 2 (2005), pp. 141-168, here p. 165.
  28. ↑ Quotes from the work reports by Verschuer, biospektrum.de
  29. ↑ Hans Hesse: I could not do without evaluating such valuable material - eyes from Auschwitz: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology and the Karin Magnussen case . In: Die Welt , August 31, 2001.
  30. ^ O. Freiherr von Verschuer: The former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics: Report on Scientific Research 1927–1945. In: Journal of Morphology and Anthropology. Vol. 55, H. 2 (1964), Eugen Fischer on completion of the 90th year of life on June 5, 1964. pp. 127–174, here p. 128.
  31. ↑ Benno Müller-Hill: The blood of Auschwitz and the silence of the scholars. In: Doris Kaufmann (Ed.): History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism. Wallstein, ISBN 3-89244-423-4 , p. 214.
  32. ↑ Marc Zirlewagen:  Verschuer, Otmar Freiherr. v .. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 27, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-393-2 , Sp. 1437-1447.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  33. ^ Ute Deichmann : Protein research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes from 1930 to 1950 in an international comparison. (PDF; 1 MB) p. 20.
  34. ^ Ernst Klee: Persil notes and false passports. How the churches helped the Nazis. Fischer, 1992.
  35. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Fischer, 2005, p. 640.
  36. ^ The Roots of Nazi Eugenics, The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Jun., 1989), pp. 175-180.
  37. ^ A b c Marion Weber, Karin Weisemann: Science and Responsibility, illustrated using the example of the human geneticist PJ Waardenburg and O. Frhr. from Verschuer. In: Medical History Journal. Vol. 24, H. 1/2 (1989), pp. 163-172, here p. 168.
  38. ↑ Hans-Peter Kröner: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology human heredity and eugenics and human genetics in the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Doris Kaufmann (Ed.): History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in National Socialism. Inventory and prospects for research. Vol. 2. Wallstein, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-89244-423-4 , pp. 652-666; Bernd Gausemeier: Natural orders and political alliances. Biological and biochemical research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes 1933–1945 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-954-6 .
  39. ↑ Azure Collier: The echoes of Auschwitz. In: NWI Times. November 8, 2003, accessed April 22, 2017 .
  40. ^ Hermann Arnold: Vaganten, Komödianten, Fieranten and Briganten. Investigations on the vagabond problem in vagabond population groups, mainly from the Palatinate. Thieme, Stuttgart 1958.
  41. ↑ In: Journal for Morphology and Anthropology . Vol. 55, 1964, pp. 127-174.
personal data
SURNAME Verschuer, Otmar von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Verschuer, Otmar Freiherr von; Verschuer, Otmar Reinhold Ralph Ernst Freiherr von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician, human geneticist and twin researcher
DATE OF BIRTH July 16, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Richelsdorf Hut
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1969
Place of death Munster in Westphalia