Rudolf Degkwitz (senior)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rudolf Degkwitz (born January 19, 1889 in Ronneburg ; † May 21, 1973 in Emmendingen ) was a German professor of paediatrics . He was one of the leading and internationally recognized paediatricians and tuberculosis doctors with special merits in the field of immunology, especially TB research. In 1944 he was because of his criticism of the Nazi regime and denounced by the People's Court to seven years in prison convicted. After the war , he campaigned for the punishment and suspension of doctors who were involved in the euthanasia program . He was unsuccessful, which is why he emigrated to the USA in 1948.

Life

Rudolf Degkwitz came from a wealthy, conservative merchant family in Thuringia , attended grammar school in Altenburg and passed his Abitur in Stralsund in 1909 . He studied science for two semesters at the University of Lausanne . He then completed a year of military service . From 1911 he studied medicine in Munich . At the beginning of the First World War , Degkwitz volunteered, was deployed on the Western Front and was seriously wounded in the Battle of Verdun . After his recovery he continued his studies at the University of Munich and graduated in 1916 with the medical state examination. He received several war awards and was dismissed from army service in 1919 as senior physician in the reserve.

During the November Revolution he took a counter-revolutionary stance, distributed leaflets in the Munich garrison and was detained for a few days by the Workers 'and Soldiers' Council . In 1919 he joined the Freikorps Oberland under Captain Josef Römer and took part in a mission to combat the Munich Soviet Republic .

He came into contact with the NSDAP through Rudolf Hess in the early 1920s , took part in discussion evenings in Munich beer taverns and got to know Adolf Hitler . Degkwitz, a member of the NSDAP since 1923, took part in the march on the Feldherrnhalle on November 9, 1923 .

In the mid-1920s there was a change within the Freikorps, which had been converted into the Bund Oberland, and Josef Römer in particular stood openly on the side of the labor movement and expressed sympathy for communism . According to one presentation, Rudolf Degkwitz distanced himself from his original position, advocated the Weimar Republic and parliamentary democracy and finally took “a consistently liberal point of view”. A contradicting representation refers to the renewed contacts to Hess and Hitler at the beginning of the 1930s as well as to an (unsuccessful) application for re-admission to the NSDAP in 1933 and does not certify Degkwitz for a “basic democratic attitude” at that time; his criticism is based on his “personal tendency to constantly oppose”.

From 1919 Degkwitz worked as a pediatrician at the Munich University Hospital. He made a name for himself in particular with the invention of the passive measles vaccination . Degkwitz became professor of paediatrics at the University of Greifswald in 1925 , from 1932 full professor for paediatrics at the University of Hamburg and chief physician of the pediatric clinic at Eppendorf University Hospital .

In 1933 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

In National Socialism

After the takeover of the Nazis Rudolf Degkwitz took in his lecture against the aggressive actions of the Nazi student leader Wolff Heinrichsdorff position and was subsequently suspended in May 1933 for six months from the service. Nevertheless, on November 11, 1933, he signed the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler at the German universities and colleges and, although he had since left the NSDAP, tried unsuccessfully to re-join the party in 1933 and 1937. Nevertheless, he continued to publicly oppose political developments, he described the Reichstag fire trial in autumn 1933 as a macabre drama and spoke out against denunciation , the cult of the leader and the militarization of everyday life. He criticized the regulation of science and culture and, as a Christian and humanist, was active against anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews , turned against the child euthanasia practiced in the children's hospital in Rothenburgsort and, from the beginning of the war, openly spoke out against the "impending European catastrophe". He also refused to open his pediatric college with the “German greeting” as prescribed . At the same time he was the author of an article on heredity and disposition in infectious diseases in the manual of human genetic biology published by Just 1940 . From 1940 Degkwitz was a member of the Senate of the Colonial Medical Academy of the NSDAP .

He supported the candidates of humanity , a group of young doctors at the UKE who were in opposition to the Nazi regime, and from the summer of 1943 some of them were arrested by the Gestapo in connection with the persecution of the White Rose Hamburg . He intervened with letters of protest against interrogations and arrests.

Degkwitz campaigned against Wilhelm Bayer , who was intensely involved in the murder of disabled people , in order to limit his influence on the Medical Faculty of the University of Hamburg. But Degkwitz was reported by his colleague, the dermatologist Paul Mulzer , after statements critical of the regime.

He was arrested on September 22, 1943, initially placed in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison and then transferred as a remand prisoner to the Berlin-Tegel prison. On February 21 and 24, 1944, the main hearing against him took place before the People's Court in Berlin , he was sentenced to seven years in prison for degrading military strength. Roland Freisler , notorious President of the People's Court, expressly did not condemn Degkwitz to death “because he saved 40,000 German children's lives through his measles prophylaxis.” He was sent to the Celle prison to be sent to prison; when evacuated on April 8, 1945 he was able to escape and go into hiding until the end of the war.

After the Second World War

In June 1945 Rudolf Degkwitz was appointed head of the Hamburg health authority by the British military government and resumed his work as chief physician at the Eppendorfer Children's Hospital.

He was also President of the newly formed Central Committee to Combat Tuberculosis in the British Zone.

Degkwitz spoke out in favor of a rigorous cleansing of the university and the Hamburg health system from (former) National Socialists, but could not assert himself with this position. After a long stay in the USA , which the university authorities viewed as a violation of his official duties, there were violent conflicts between Degkwitz and the school senator Heinrich Landahl .

Thereupon Degkwitz decided to move to the USA in 1948, where he worked for the company Merck, Sharp and Dohme . In a letter to the Hamburg University Senate, he referred to the failure of the denazification policy:

“Almost all of the former National Socialists, the idea-bearers and heralds of Hitler's gospel of violence were sent back to the universities with the excuse that they were only 'followers'. The tasks of the university and the responsibility of the academic teachers are so great that there can be no excuse even for 'followers'. "

Degkwitz did not return to the Federal Republic until the beginning of 1973, shortly before his death.

In connection with the case of the head of the euthanasia center Werner Heyde , Degkwitz filed a complaint in 1949 and 1960 against the pediatrician Werner Catel and other doctors known to him who were involved in child “euthanasia” . However, both proceedings were discontinued. In 1949, in their refusal of further legal proceedings due to the defendant's lack of awareness of guilt, the judges ruled that the elimination of life unworthy of life had been a matter of course even in classical antiquity. “It cannot be said, that the ethics of Plato and Seneca, a. have held this view is morally lower than that of Christianity. ”In 1960 the proceedings were rejected again, referring to the 1949 decision.

Hendrik van den Bussche describes Degkwitz's struggle against the medical establishment: "There was collective repression, a 40-year silence in Eppendorf." It was not until the 1980s that Klaus von Dohnanyi initiated a process of coming to terms with the past. Degkwitz had met with bitter hostility among Hamburg's doctors and professors because of his demand for consistent denazification. "Just a few months after the end of the war, he was facing a majority faction of 'denazified' who had only a limited interest in his ideas of the 'new' Germany" (...). “His attempts to bring those involved in 'child euthanasia' to the judge also failed because of the silent coalition of the judiciary and the medical profession. "

family

Rudolf Degkwitz was married to Eva, geb. Jacobs. They had three sons and a daughter: the psychiatrist Rudolf Degkwitz jun. (1920–1990), the graphic designer, caricaturist and lecturer for illustration at the Bremen University of the Arts Hermann Degkwitz (1921–2007), the physician Richard Degkwitz (1922–1984) and the biochemist Eva Degkwitz (1926–2012).

Works

literature

  • Angela Bottin: Tight time. Traces of displaced and persecuted people at the University of Hamburg. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Audimax of the University of Hamburg from February 22 to May 17, 1991. Hamburg Contributions to the History of Science Volume 11, Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-496-00419-3
  • Hendrik van den Bussche (ed.): Medical science in the "Third Reich". Continuity, adaptation and opposition at the Hamburg Medical Faculty , Berlin 1989, pp. 400–403, 408–418.
  • Ursel Hochmuth , Gertrud Meyer : Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933–1945 , second edition, Frankfurt 1980, ISBN 3-87682-036-7 , pp. 292–302
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Götz Aly : The burdened. "Euthanasia" 1939–1945. A history of society . Fischer, Frankfurt 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-000429-1 , pp. 140-142
  • Robert Volz: Reich manual of the German society . The handbook of personalities in words and pictures. Volume 1: A-K. German business publisher, Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 103f.
  2. ↑ Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933-1945 , p. 293.
  3. ↑ Hendrik van den Bussche (Ed.): Medical Science in the 'Third Reich' - Continuity, Adaptation and Opposition at the Hamburg Medical Faculty Berlin and Hamburg 1989, ISBN 3-496-00477-0 , p. 400f.
  4. ^ Member entry of Rudolf Degkwitz at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on April 5, 2015.
  5. ↑ Hendrik van den Bussche (ed.): Medical science in the "Third Reich". Continuity, adaptation and opposition at the Hamburg Medical Faculty , Berlin / Hamburg 1989, p. 33 f.
  6. ↑ Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933-1945 , p. 296.
  7. ↑ Hoimar von Ditfurth : Interior views of a conspecific. My balance sheet , Düsseldorf 1989, p. 214, ISBN 3-546-42097-7
  8. ↑ Götz Aly: The burdened. "Euthanasia" 1939–1945. A history of society . Frankfurt 2013, p. 140 ff.
  9. ^ Judgment against Prof. Degkwitz of February 24, 1944, Az. 5 J 223/44, 1 L 23/44; quoted from: Ursel Hochmuth, Gertrud Meyer: Streiflichter from the Hamburg resistance. 1933-1945 , p. 300.
  10. ^ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg, Germany: The climax has not yet been reached - DER SPIEGEL 18/1947. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
  11. ↑ Hendrik van den Bussche (ed.): Medical science in the 'Third Reich'. Continuity, adaptation and opposition at the Hamburg Medical Faculty , Berlin / Hamburg 1989, p. 428 f.
  12. ↑ Norbert Jachertz: Medical crime : Remember and heed . In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt , December 12, 2008, vol. 105, 50, p. A2699f (pdf)
  13. ^ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg, Germany: EUTHANASIE: Sleeped - DER SPIEGEL 34/1960. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
  14. ^ Sarah Levy: National Socialism: "A 40-year silence in Eppendorf" . In: The time . June 9, 2015, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed March 30, 2017]).
  15. ↑ Hendrik van den Bussche: The Hamburg University Medicine in National Socialism. Dietrich Reimer Verlag 2014, ISBN 978-3-496-02870-3
personal data
SURNAME Degkwitz, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German professor for paediatrics
DATE OF BIRTH January 19, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Ronneburg
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1973
Place of death Emmendingen