Reich Institute for Vitamin Testing and Research

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The Reichsanstalt für Vitaminprüfung und Vitaminforschung (also known as the Reichsvitaminanstalt ) was a research institute in Leipzig that existed between 1942 and 1945 and was subordinate to the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture .

prehistory

The driving force behind the establishment of the vitamin institute was the Leipzig professor of veterinary physiology Carl Arthur Scheunert . Convinced of the importance of the topic as a result of his intensive research in the field of vitamins , he asked the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture to create an institute for research into nutritional issues as early as 1925 . The first efforts to found this institution can be proven since 1938, but only after Scheunert published the report Der Vitaminhaushalt des Deutschen Volkes in 1940, there were serious efforts to realize the project, probably also to achieve the ideologically desired “ freedom from nutrients for the German people “Guarantee. Prominent sponsors of the project were Hermann Göring and Martin Bormann .

founding

In the middle of 1940 the plans became more concrete, so that Scheunert handed over a list of the rooms required for the new institute to the Reich Ministry of the Interior. According to the officials responsible, the required premises could only be created by building a completely new institute, which was, however, categorically excluded for the time of the war. As an interim solution, the use of a former Jewish sanatorium in Berlin was considered, which, with its 100 rooms, was assessed as "very suitable" for the project. Objections of the owners who emigrated to the Soviet Union were answered with the forced purchase of the building by the state. The facility ultimately failed, however, due to concerns from the Berlin building police , who feared the health of the population from the escape of laboratory rats . Instead, the building was used by the hygiene service of the Waffen SS until the end of the war. The vitamin institute was built on the grounds of the Veterinary Medicine Faculty of the University of Leipzig as a barracks, a fact that Scheunert was able to use as a professor of veterinary physiology in Leipzig. For the time after the end of the war, a new building for the vitamin institute was planned on the site of the buildings in Berlin intended for several health administration institutes.

On August 15, 1941, Adolf Hitler officially ordered the establishment of the institute. Scheunert received his appointment as president of the institution on December 21, 1942.

Further course

Until the barracks were completed, the work of the vitamin institute took place in the rooms of the Veterinary Physiological Institute of the University of Leipzig. Scheunert had formulated the preliminary work objectives:

  • the development of methods for the production and extraction of foods rich in vitamins
  • the preservation of the natural vitamin content of the food from the production to the treatment and processing to the preparation and consumption
  • the creation of “vitamin balances” for the entire territory of the Reich and for individual population and occupational groups.

At the end of 1943 the barracks were almost complete and should go into operation in December. The night before the inauguration, it was completely destroyed on December 4, 1943 during the first major bombing raid on Leipzig ( Operation Haddock ) and was only able to resume work at the end of 1944, but at that time again in the premises of the Veterinary Physiological Institute.

At the end of the war, the vitamin institute lost its sponsor. Scheunert was taken away by the American occupation forces and interned with other scientists from the University of Leipzig in Weilburg an der Lahn. Under his representative Schwarze, tensions with the veterinary faculty increased. Although the management of the university tried to accommodate the institution on a site in Leipzig-Kleinzschocher, it was moved to Bergholz-Rehbrücke , a community bordering Potsdam, on the orders of SMAD in September 1948 . There it was merged in 1957 with the Institute for Nutrition Research, also located in Rehbrücke, to form the Institute for Nutrition of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, from which the Central Institute for Nutrition of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR emerged in 1969/1970 . After reunification, the institute was re-established in 1992 as the German Institute for Nutritional Research and is now part of the Leibniz Association .

literature

  • Heinrich-Karl Gräfe: Carl-Arthur Scheunert - researcher, work, man. German Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Berlin , Berlin 1954.
  • Karsten Riedel: The history of the veterinary medicine faculty of the University of Leipzig from 1933 to 1945 . Vet.-med. Diss., Leipzig 2004.
  • Carl-Arthur Scheunert: Aims, establishment and structure of the Reich Institute for Vitamin Testing and Vitamin Research . In: The health management. Goal and path. 1944; 5:89.