Paul Nitsche

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Paul Nitsche

Hermann Paul Nitsche (born November 25, 1876 in Colditz ; † March 25, 1948 in Dresden ) was director of the sanatoriums and nursing homes in Leipzig-Dosen and Pirna-Sonnenstein , expert and medical director of the T4 campaign in the National Socialist German Reich . As a doctor involved in killings in these institutions, he was sentenced to death and executed after the war.

Origin and studies

Paul Nitsche was born on November 25, 1876 in Colditz in Saxony as the son of the doctor Wilhelm Hermann Nitsche (1844–1921) employed at the insane asylum there. As a student he attended the Kreuzschule in Dresden. Nitsche studied medicine in Leipzig and Göttingen and received his doctorate in 1902 in Göttingen with a thesis on "Memory disorders in two cases of organic brain disease".

From 1904 to 1908 he was an assistant to the psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin as well as an assistant and department doctor at the municipal insane asylum in Frankfurt am Main and the university clinics in Heidelberg and Munich . In 1913 he moved to Dresden as a senior physician in the municipal sanatorium and nursing home .

With the founder of German racial hygiene , Alfred Ploetz , well known since 1910, Nitsche took part in the exhibition on racial hygiene at the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden in 1911 . He later worked as a psychiatrist in Pirna at the sanatorium at Sonnenstein Castle , which he was acting provisionally in charge from 1914 to early 1918.

Director of the hospital in Leipzig-Dosen

In April 1918, after the death of Georg Lehmann, he was appointed director of the Leipzig-Dosen sanatorium . Appointed professor in 1925, Nitsche advanced to advisory psychiatrist for institutional issues of the Saxon state government in 1927. As early as the early 1920s, he was concerned with the question of how to deal with the mentally ill and their reproduction . In scientific lectures he spoke out in favor of preventing the possibility of reproduction for the mentally ill. Even before 1933 he was one of the leading representatives of a racial hygiene oriented psychiatry .

Director of the healing and nursing home Pirna-Sonnenstein

On August 1, 1928, Nitsche returned as director and successor to Georg Ilberg (1862–1942) at the Pirna-Sonnenstein sanatorium. Here, too, he worked on scientific issues relating to genetic biology and forensics . As his most important work, he contributed the chapter “General Therapy and Prophylaxis of Mental Illnesses” for the “Handbook of Mental Illnesses”, which was published by Oswald Bumke and was considered a standard work. A forced sterilization he was not even at that time hostile to: In order to prevent the mentally ill reproduction called Nitsche 1929 next marriage bans a "statutory sterilization under certain conditions, even against the will of those concerned." Nitsche spoke out unreservedly in favor of this measure even before 1933, when the law to prevent hereditary offspring officially introduced forced sterilization. He was now also an advocate of the ideas of Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche . The " destruction of life unworthy of life " is not a violation of elementary human rights, but on the contrary a commandment of humanity.

Politically, Nitsche already tied himself in 1933 when he joined the NSDAP . He became a judge at the Hereditary Health Supreme Court in Dresden. As secretary of the "German Association for Psychiatry" he drafted the statutes for the "Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists", which in 1935 appointed him managing director.

In 1936, Nitsche in Pirna-Sonnenstein took the initiative to introduce starvation food for patients who, according to his racial hygienic ideas, represented an unnecessary financial burden on society as " ballast existences ". At the beginning of 1939, the head of the “People's Care” department in the Saxon Ministry of the Interior, Alfred Fernholz , urged that the starvation diet used by Nitsche should be introduced in other Saxon state institutions. Nitsche remained as medical director until the sanctuary and nursing home was converted into an euthanasia facility for Aktion T4 , the systematic killing of the mentally ill and disabled at the end of 1939, disguised as "euthanasia".

For January 1, 1940 Nitsche became a mental hospital Leipzig dozing added as director and took over on 1 February 1940, the local official duties.

Expert and medical director of the T4 campaign

The head of Office II of the Führer’s Chancellery , Oberdienstleiter Viktor Brack , who was entrusted with the organization of Operation T4, approached Nitsche at the beginning of 1940 with the request to develop a medication method for killing the “euthanasia” victims and try it out. Nitsche decided in favor of the barbiturate “ Luminal ”, a sleeping pill that was used against epilepsy , among other things , and had two decisive advantages for the required purpose: On the one hand, it was a drug that was common in all clinics and was therefore available in sufficient quantities, and on the other was fatal only at higher doses and did not lead directly to death, but to health complications which only resulted in the patient's death after a few days. Death could thus be traced back to a “natural” cause. Nitsche coined the term "Luminalschema" for this and tested this procedure on over 100 patients.

From February 28, 1940, working as a T4 expert , Nitsche was finally seconded to the T4 organization on May 1, 1940, where he was initially employed as a senior expert and deputy medical director. From December 1941 he replaced Werner Heyde as the medical director of Aktion T4.

According to a statement by Georg Andreae, the head of the welfare department and the sanatoriums and nursing homes of the Hannover Provincial Administration, on August 8, 1961, Nitsche commented on the “euthanasia” campaign as follows: “It is wonderful when we are in the institutions get rid of the ballast and can now practice proper therapy. "

As the medical director of Aktion T4, he was one of the main people responsible for the killing of around 70,000 sick and disabled people. He was also the instigator of the drug killings in the phase of "wild euthanasia", which replaced it after the official stop of Operation T4 in August 1941 and again claimed at least 30,000 victims. Also at the action 14f13 Nitsche was involved as an expert who selected the potential victims among the prisoners in the concentration camps, then in the two death camps Pirna-Sonnenstein and Hartheim were gassed.

Judgment and execution in Dresden

The jury court in Dresden during the prosecutor's petition

Nitsche was arrested in Sebnitz in the spring of 1945 . The results of the investigation carried out by Soviet authorities were handed over to the German judicial authorities in Saxony on June 20, 1946. The district court of Dresden rose on January 7, 1947 indictment of Nitsche and another 14 offenders. Nitsche referred to his position, according to which the killing of the terminally ill was scientifically and socially justified, and protested against the murder charge . However, with a judgment of July 7, 1947, he was sentenced to death . After the appeal was rejected by the Dresden Higher Regional Court , the judgment was carried out on March 25, 1948 using the guillotine and his body was handed over to the anatomy department in Leipzig.

See also

literature

  • Boris Böhm, Hagen Markwardt: Hermann Paul Nitsche (1876–1948) - On the biography of a reform psychiatrist and main actor in Nazi “euthanasia”. In: Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten (Ed.): National Socialist Euthanasia Crimes. Contributions to the processing of their history in Saxony. Michael Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2004. ISBN 3-937602-32-1 .
  • Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life". S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983. ISBN 3-10-039303-1 .
  • Ernst Klee (Ed.): Documents on "Euthanasia". Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag Nr. 4327, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-596-24327-0 .
  • Götz Aly (ed.): Aktion T4 1939–1945. The “Euthanasia” headquarters in Tiergartenstrasse 4th Edition Hentrich, 2nd expanded edition, Berlin, 1989. ISBN 3-926175-66-4 .
  • Joachim S. Hohmann : The "euthanasia" trial of Dresden 1947. A contemporary historical documentation. Frankfurt a. M., 1993
  • Thomas Schilter: Inhuman discretion. The National Socialist “euthanasia” killing center in Pirna-Sonnenstein 1940/41. Kiepenheuer, Leipzig 1999, ISBN 3-378-01033-9 .
  • Alexander Mitscherlich , Fred Mielke: Medicine without humanity. Documents of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial. Fischer library, Frankfurt a. M., 1960

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nitsche, Paul: General Therapy and Prophylaxis of Mental Illnesses. In: Oswald Bumke (Ed.): Handbuch der Geisteskrankheiten, Vol. 4, Berlin 1929, p. 126.
  2. ^ Boris Böhm: Alfred Fernholz. A desk clerk in the service of "public health". In: Christine Pieper, Mike Schmeitzner, Gerhard Naser (Eds.): Braune Karrieren. Dresden perpetrators and actors in National Socialism. Sandstein, Dresden 2012, ISBN 978-3-942422-85-7 , pp. 154–161, here p. 155.
personal data
SURNAME Nitsche, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nitsche, Hermann Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor, medical director of Aktion T4
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Colditz
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1948
Place of death Dresden