Richard Wilmanns

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Richard Karl Paul Wilmanns (born September 22, 1880 in Durango , Mexico ; † May 3, 1958 in Bethel (Bielefeld) ) was a German physician who carried out forced sterilizations after the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring came into force in 1934 .

Live and act

Wilmanns was born in Mexico as a scion of the Hanseatic merchant and scholarly family Wilmanns . At the age of six he came to Germany, where he attended high school in Groß-Lichterfelde and graduated from high school in 1899 . At this time, his family moved to Freiburg im Breisgau , which is why he completed the first semesters of his medical studies at the universities of Tübingen and Freiburg . In 1901 he moved to the University of Marburg , where he passed the state examination in 1903 . In 1904 he received his doctorate with a thesis on implantation recurrences of tumors .

His professional career initially took him to the municipal hospital in Worms , where he was a volunteer assistant to the surgeon Lothar Heidenhain (1860–1940). He then worked as an assistant doctor at the Diakonissenhaus Freiburg with Edwin Goldmann . After his marriage to Marie Moeller, b. Zander in 1907 he set up his own practice for surgery , gynecology and radiology in Augsburg . Just one year later, Wilmanns was offered the position of senior physician in the surgical department of the Westphalian deaconess institution Sarepta in Bethel .

Wilmanns served from 1914 first as a battalion doctor, then as a station doctor in a field hospital , where he was, among other things, the superior and teacher of Hanns Löhr , whom he later brought to Bethel as a colleague.

In January 1918 Wilmanns was discharged from military service and returned to Bethel, where he was appointed board member and first doctor of Sareptas in 1925. In 1949 Wilmanns was retired, but kept the gynecological and obstetric department until 1953 and continued to run a small private ward.

Forced sterilization during the Nazi era

After the National Socialist regime had passed the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Offspring" (GzVeN) in 1933, which came into force in 1934, the institutions in Bethel did not want to stand back and were ready to carry out forced sterilizations . They invoked the following provision: "Anyone who is hereditary can be rendered sterile (sterilized) by surgical intervention if ... it is to be expected that their offspring will suffer from severe physical or mental hereditary defects." The Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten Her chief physician Werner Villinger and the psychiatrist Karsten Jaspersen rejected further “measures for euthanasia”, but entrusted Richard Wilmanns and his senior physician Korte with forcibly rendering people sterile. The sterilizations were carried out under “joint responsibility” by Richard Wilmanns.

family

Richard Wilmanns was the eldest son of the merchant and consul Hilmar Franz Günther Wilmanns (1847–1912) in Durango, Torreón . His mother Frieda Elsner died in 1891. Richard Wilmann's younger brother was the historian Ernst Wilmanns , his sister Armgard Frieda was married to the Lutheran bishop Otto Dibelius .

Richard Wilmanns and his wife had eleven children, five of whom became medical professionals, including the oncologist Wolfgang Wilmanns .

His father Hilmar's brothers included the Germanist Wilhelm Wilmanns , the lawyer and Reichstag member Karl Wilmanns and the ancient historian Gustav Heinrich Wilmanns .

The psychiatrist Karl Wilmanns and the chemist Gustav Wilmanns were his cousins. Their father Franz Rudolf Florenz August Wilmanns (1843–1931), who was also temporarily a merchant in Durango, was also a brother of Richard Wilmann's father Hilmar.

Honor and criticism

In 1961 a street in Bielefeld was named after Richard Wilmanns ▼ . Regarding this controversial honor, a letter from Dorothea Buck , a victim of Richard Wilmanns, to the representative of the Evangelical Church of Germany Klaus Engelhardt says: "In honor of the capable Bethel surgeon, who had forcibly sterilized us all, a street in Bethel" Richard-Wilmanns-Weg «. The victims continued to be ignored. ”The street name was changed to“ Am Obstgarten ”in 2019.

Fonts

  • 1904 About implantation recurrences of tumors . Contributions to clinical surgery, vol. 42, issue 2.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl-Werner Ratschko: Doctors during the Nazi era "Here I stand ... I am following Adolf Hitler!" The "old fighter" Hanns Löhr at the head of the Medical Faculty in Kiel 1935 to 1941. Schleswig-Holsteinisches Ärzteblatt 2015 ( 4): 22-25
  2. ↑ Bärbel Bitter: 60 Years End of the War Difficult Times for Gilead9
  3. ^ Schmuhl, Hans-Walter 2001: 66
  4. ↑ Bernward Wolf (Ed.): Lifelong stamped as inferior: the memorial in memory of the victims of forced sterilization during the Nazi era in Bethel; Documentation, background information, questions about current action. Bethel contributions 56, Bethel-Verlag, Bielefeld 2001, ISBN 978-3-935972-00-0 , p. 17
  5. ↑ Family tree of the Wilmanns family, accessed on March 2, 2017
  6. ^ Genealogy about Wilmanns Peter Gustav, Mayor of Halle WFA 1780-1828 (created by Rolf Willmanns); Retrieved March 3, 2017
  7. ↑ Dorothea-Sophie Buck-Zerchin: Denied - Forgotten. Opening speech for the inauguration of the memorial for people who were forcibly sterilized in Bethel from 1934 to 1945 on June 18, 2000
  8. ↑ Dorothea S. Buck-Zerchin: Letter to the authorized representative of the EKD, Dr. theol. Klaus Engelhardt from February 9, 1997 , accessed on March 2, 2017
  9. ↑ Benedikt Schülter: Emotional debate about a Bielefelder Straße. Retrieved September 4, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Wilmanns, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wilmanns, Richard Karl Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Victoria de Durango , Mexico
DATE OF DEATH May 3, 1958
Place of death Bethel (Bielefeld) , Germany