Paul Konitzer (medical doctor)

Paul Ignatz Konitzer (born  February 1, 1894 in Preussisch-Friedland , †  April 22, 1947 in Dresden ) was a German hygienist , social medicine specialist and health politician . From August 1945 to the beginning of 1947 he acted in the Soviet occupation zone as President of the German Central Administration for Health Care. He was arrested in late February 1947 on the basis of allegations regarding the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war in the Zeithain POW camp and, according to the Russian Federation's Military Prosecutor's Office, committed suicide around eight weeks later while in custody.

Life

Paul Konitzer was born in Prussian Friedland in 1894 as the only son of three children to a self-employed carpenter . He completed elementary school and the Progymnasium in his hometown and then the grammar school in Preussisch Stargard and Culm , which he graduated in 1913. First he began to study law , which he broke off due to the beginning of the First World War . From August 1914 to February 1919 he did military service , in May 1915 he was promoted to medical sergeant and in March 1916 to medical sergeant . During the war he was posted to Berlin and Greifswald to study medicine , and at the end of the war he held the rank of field doctor. After completing his studies, he received his license to practice medicine in April 1920 . In the same year he did his doctorate at the University of Greifswald with Ernst Friedberger , who shaped his interest in questions of hygiene , social medicine and epidemiology , with a thesis on the serological diagnosis of syphilis . At the Greifswald Hygiene Institute, he also met his wife, who worked there as a laboratory assistant, with whom he had a son and two daughters. Two of his children later also became doctors.

From January 1921 Paul Konitzer worked as a city doctor and district welfare doctor in Stollberg in the Ore Mountains , and in August of the same year he moved to Hörde near Dortmund as city councilor and city medical councilor . In January 1926 he was appointed to the city council and city medical council in Magdeburg , where he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1928 . Due to his diverse and successful activities, such as a member of the health committee and the expert committee for the public hospital system as well as a consultant for the administrative reform of the health system of the German Association of Cities , he was one of the local political dignitaries of the city of Magdeburg in the last years of the Weimar Republic . During his term of office, among other things, the employment of school and welfare doctors and school dentists as well as a modernization of the Magdeburg hospitals fell. After the seizure of power by the Nazis , he was in 1933 removed from his offices and functions and briefly detained. He then set up as a general practitioner in his own practice in Dresden-Blasewitz . With the beginning of the Second World War he was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a medical officer in the reserve. After a brief assignment on the western front , he became a consultant hygiene doctor for Military District IV , based in Dresden . Among other things, he was responsible for carrying out hygiene inspections in POW camps , including the Zeithain main camp ( Stalag IV-H ), which was affected by a severe typhoid epidemic between 1942 and 1944 . In 1944 he was recalled as a military district hygienist due to his work as SPD city councilor in the Weimar Republic, and until the end of the war he worked as a military doctor in the medical department in Leipzig .

Paul Konitzer probably did not become a prisoner of war and returned to Dresden with his family, who had meanwhile been evacuated to Waldenburg near Glauchau , after the end of the war. In 1945 he became a member of the SPD again, from 1946 he belonged to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). From July to August 1945 he acted as State Secretary responsible for the health system in the state administration of Saxony. In this capacity, on July 18, 1945, he issued a declaration of invalidity for "all laws of the Hitler Empire" that affected the health care system, including the Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Offspring , the Marriage Health Law and the Nuremberg Laws . On August 24, 1945 he became President of the German Central Administration for Health Care (DZVG), a position comparable to the office of Minister of Health in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ). The appointment was based on a proposal by Otto Grotewohl , from 1949 to 1964 the first Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), with whom he was known from his time in Magdeburg. His most important tasks as head of the DZVG were the rebuilding of a functioning health system in the SBZ, the prevention of epidemics , the organization of health care for the around 4.3 million refugees and resettlers in the SBZ and the reform of the study and training operations in the medical sector Professions.

On February 18, 1947, he was arrested by the NKVD during a business trip to Berlin-Buch, according to newspaper reports, "for crimes in connection with the mass deaths of Soviet prisoners of war in the Zeithain camp" and has since been considered missing. According to the military main prosecutor of the Russian Federation of 25 February 2000 on request of the son of Paul Konitz he took on 22 April 1947 in custody in Dresden life, the investigation against him on the basis of Article 2 of the Control Council Law no. 10 was consequently discontinued on May 4, 1947. In the book The Coldest War, published in 1982 by Ullstein-Verlag . Professor Frucht and Clive Freeman's secret of warfare agents is found differently from the statement that he was shot dead in a gravel pit in Biesdorf , a suburb of Berlin . This version was reported by Karl Linser , who succeeded Paul Konitzer as President of the DZVG after he had previously become Professor of Dermatology at the University of Leipzig in April 1947 .

Works (selection)

• The health system of the city of Magdeburg and special contributions. Düsseldorf 1928.
• Public health instead of racial madness. Berlin 1946.

literature

• Peter Schneck: Paul Konitzer (1894–1947): hygienist, medical officer, social medicine specialist, health politician. In: NTM - Journal for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. 12 (4) / 2004. Birkhäuser Verlag, pp. 213-232, ISSN  0036-6978 .
• Jens Nagel: The mass deaths of Soviet prisoners of war 1941 to 1944 - On the role of the Wehrmacht doctor in Wehrkreiskommando IV Dresden Dr. Paul Konitzer (1894-1947). In: Boris Böhm (Hrsg.), Norbert Haase (Hrsg.): Perpetrators - criminal prosecution - debt relief. Biographies of doctors between Nazi tyranny and German post-war history. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2008, ISBN 3-86-583166-4 , pp. 93–118.
• Konitzer, Paul. In: Volker Klimpel: Doctors Death: Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix. Königshausen and Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-82-602769-8 , p. 131.
• Peter Schneck:  Konitzer, Paul . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 , p. 540.
• The Russian grave near Zeithain. President Konitzer's military service. In: Der Spiegel . Edition of March 1, 1947, p. 4.

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Konitzer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Gerald Christopeit: Konitzer, Paul Ignatz Entry in the Magdeburg Biographical Lexicon (with picture)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Clive Freeman: The Coldest War. Professor Frucht and the GDR's secret of warfare agents. Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-55-007955-9 , p. 42/43.