Otto Abs

Otto Abs as a witness at the Nuremberg trials.

Otto August Hans Abs (born November 30, 1891 in Stettin ; † May 10, 1966 ) was a German medic.

Live and act

Abs was a son of the senior railway assistant August Abs. In his youth he attended the city school in Bergen auf Rügen as well as the middle school and the humanistic grammar school in Greifswald , where he passed the school leaving examination at Easter 1911 . He then studied medicine at the University of Greifswald. There he passed the preliminary medical examination in July 1913. Two clinical semesters followed.

From 1914 Abs took part in the First World War, in which he was deployed as a field doctor in France , Poland , the Carpathians , Bucovina , Transylvania , Romania and Italy . In November 1918 he was sent to Greifswald to continue his studies. In July 1919 he passed the medical state examination with the rating “very good” and immediately afterwards received his license to practice medicine, taking into account his military service . In 1920 he received his doctorate with a thesis supervised by Erich Peiper on a case of Erythema infectiosum and the relationship of this disease to Erythema exudativum multiforme Hebra at the Medical Faculty of Greifswald University as a Dr. med. (Doctorate in Medicine , Surgery, and Obstetrics ).

From September 1919 to June 1921 Abs worked as an assistant at the Nordend Hospital in Berlin-Niederschönhausen. From June 1921 to October 1926 he worked as a doctor on a coal mine in Barentsburg on Spitzbergen , where he gained extensive experience in the field of polar medicine . In 1927 he deepened his education at the Social Hygiene Academy in Charlottenburg, where he familiarized himself with the areas of psychiatry and pulmonary tuberculosis. From October 1927 to February 1937 he then worked as a city doctor in Essen.

In 1933 Abs joined the NSDAP ( membership number 2,914,835), in which he took over the office of acting district leader. In addition, as a storm leader (?) In the medical service, he became a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS-No. 106.080). On November 9, 1938, he was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer . In the security service of the SS (SD) he became the head and informant of an SD branch.

In 1937 Abs was appointed medical officer and head of the health department of the city of Mülheim an der Ruhr . In this position he was promoted to medical councilor in 1937 and to senior medical officer in 1938. Also in 1937 he became a member of the NS-Ärztebund (NSDÄB) as district chairman . In 1941 he was elected alderman for the city of Mülheim.

During the Second World War , Abs took over the role of Oberfeldführer and Gau disaster officer in 1943. He was also a member of the Reich Defense Commission in Essen.

At the end of the war, Abs was arrested by the US Army . As a result, he was heard as a witness at the Nuremberg Trials .

On November 24, 1949, Abs was classified as Category III by the Denazification Committee in Duisburg and ordered that he should be retired with the pension of a city doctor (not an alderman). It was also ordered that he should be forbidden from holding a managerial or supervisory position. The reason given was that he was a staunch activist who had a large number of offices and who was feared by both the population and the medical profession. As head of the SD, he was also responsible for the arrest of deputy Tommes. Conversely, however, he was credited with the fact that he "conducted his work in a strictly correct manner and according to purely medical aspects, irrespective of whether or not party authorities agreed with the applicant's orders."

Regardless of his professional ban (or after it was lifted?) Abs worked for the district health office in Rendsburg from 1951 to 1952 .

In addition to his medical work, Otto Abs worked as a research assistant in the German Society for Polar Research from the 1920s until his death . As the only German specialist in polar medicine at the time, he took part in numerous conferences, and also published numerous articles and some monographs on topics in this area.

Fonts

• A case of Erythema infectiosum and the relationship of this disease to Erythema exudativum multiforme Hebra , Greifswald 1920. (Dissertation)
• Studies on the nutrition of the residents of Barentsburg, Svalbard , 1929 ( digitized ).
• On epidemics of unspecific catarrh of the airways on Svalbard , 1930 ( digital copy ).
• The Eskimo diet and its health effects , 1959.

literature

• Hans Fischer (ed.): The forced labor system in the Third Reich. As an interpreter in Mülheim camps. The memories of Eleonore Helbach , Verlag an der Ruhr, Mülheim an der Ruhr 2003, ISBN 3-86072-764-8 , especially p. 24.

Web links

• Obituary of the Society for Polar Research from 1966 (PDF; 120 kB)