Sophie Ehrhardt

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Sophie Ehrhardt (born October 31, 1902 in Kazan , Russian Empire ; † October 2, 1990 ) was a German-Russian anthropologist and racial ideology “ gypsy researcher ” during the Nazi era . Ehrhardt had recorded, categorized and selected thousands of " Gypsies " - especially German Sinti - for the Racial Hygiene Research Center under the direction of Robert Ritter . Most of these people were deported and murdered in the " Auschwitz Gypsy Camp ".

After 1945 she worked as a lecturer at the University of Tübingen . Not least on the basis of her National Socialist studies, she published various writings and received funds for further "Gypsy research" at times.

From zoology to anthropology

Years of apprenticeship in zoology

Sophie Ehrhardt was the daughter of Emil Ehrhardt, a pharmacist born in Wenden in 1867 . Her mother, Karoline Ehrhardt (née Thomson), was born in Reval in 1865 . After the father's death in 1904, the mother moved to Tartu with her two daughters . Between 1912 and 1916 Sophie Ehrhardt attended a Russian private high school. Then she switched to a private girls' high school. In 1921 she passed her Abitur there.

From 1921 to 1926 Ehrhardt studied zoology at the University of Tartu . During her studies she was a member of the academic association of German-Baltic students . In 1926 she completed her studies with a master's degree . In the summer of 1927 Ehrhardt continued her zoology studies in Munich because her master's degree was not recognized in Germany.

From March 1927 she started working in the statistical department of the Anthropological Institute of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and in the Munich State Collection . In July 1930 the doctorate followed. In her dissertation she dealt with ants .

Racial research

In June 1930 she turned to anthropological topics by working intensively on racial issues in the Anthropological Institute until October 1930 . During these four months the institute was headed by Theodor Mollison . Sophie Ehrhardt worked as his assistant.

This activity was followed by research trips to the Baltic States and the Dobruja to Romania. Between 1931 and 1934 she published several articles in magazines; for example also in people and race and in the anthropological gazette .

National Socialism

Racial hygiene requirement

Her volatile career since 1930 was followed by her political commitment to radical racial hygiene in 1934 . In an article in the journal for medical training, she wrote that the German people had the right to “consciously engage in racial politics and selection”. As she wrote, “mentally inferior”, “ Rhineland bastards ” and above all “the Jews ” had to be selected.

Turning to cultural anthropology

The well-known National Socialist racial researcher Hans FK Günther brought the 33-year-old “racial hygienist” to the Berlin University Institute for Ethnic Biology, Rural Sociology and Peasant Research on November 1, 1935, becoming aware of Ehrhardt's publications . Through this contact Ehrhardt increasingly turned away from the measuring, physical anthropology of her former teacher Theodor Mollison. From now on, the sociological - cultural-scientific race studies and thus the cultural anthropology were in the center of her interest.

Participation in Nazi crimes

From a "master list" that Ehrhardt presented on May 21, 1942 on the occasion of her employment at the University of Tübingen (Uni-Archiv Tübingen 126a / 92a), it emerges that she was in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps between 1938 and 1939 and in the ghetto in 1940 Litzmannstadt had carried out race research. At a time when her main “research objects ” - the “Gypsies” from East Prussia - had already been deported, she changed at the request of the racial biologist and SS Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Gieseler (1900–1976), who had known Sophie Ehrhardt from the institute in Munich since 1927 , on April 1, 1942 to the Racial Biology Institute of the University of Tübingen, which was subordinate to the Racial Policy Office of the NSDAP . At that time Gieseler was director of the institute, whose task was in particular to prepare reports on "Jews and Gypsies" for the Reichssippenamt and the health authorities .

In the same year Ehrhardt undertook a research trip to Estonia , whereby the "research results" obtained about the Setu people were published for the first time in 1990 - the year they died. On December 16, 1942, the SS and Police Chief Heinrich Himmler ordered the “total liquidation” of the “Gypsies”.

From 1938 to 1942 Ehrhardt worked for the Race Hygiene and Population Biology Research Center in the Reich Health Office . Up to 1945, the institute examined around 24,000 people in order to classify them as “full gypsies”, “gypsy mixed race” or “non-gypsy”. This classification was used to decide on their deportation, forced sterilization and, in particular, their murder. After 1945 Ehrhardt had full and sole access to Ritter's original Nazi documents at times.

post war period

Lecturer at the University of Tübingen

Ehrhardt kept the Tübingen Racial Biology Institute running until 1948. In the winter semester of 1949/50 Ehrhardt completed his habilitation in Tübingen with the text Morphological-Genetic Investigations on the dermal system of the hand . On September 2, 1950, she was appointed lecturer in Tübingen. Her inaugural lecture was entitled The Significance of the Skin Bar System in Criminology and Hereditary Biological Expertise .

In 1955 Ehrhardt took over the management of the Tübingen Institute again, which was now simply called the Anthropological Institute . On April 12, 1957, she was appointed adjunct professor. In this position, she supervised and reviewed numerous dissertations and held courses.

At the invitation of the University of Poona Ehrhardt undertook a research trip to India between 1958 and 1959. There she carried out anthropological studies on the Indian population - especially in the vicinity of Bombay . On the basis of this research, publications followed such as the magazine articles with the titles The skin ridges of the Palma of the fishing population of Son Kolis near Bombay (1963) and About prehistoric human skeleton finds in the Indian suburbs (1964).

Funding from the DFG

Between 1966 and 1970 Ehrhardt received funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Her project Population Genetic Studies on Gypsies was funded . The project was not discontinued for reasons of content, but because the DFG formally criticized Ehrhardt's work reports.

Preliminary investigation

The first criminal proceedings for murder against Adolf Würth and Ehrhardt were opened by the Cologne Public Prosecutor in 1961 and closed in 1963. A second criminal case against Würth and Ehrhardt was discontinued in 1986.

At the beginning of September 1981, Sophie Ehrhardt's “Gypsy Research” became known to the public during the Nazi era. In the same year , the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma filed a criminal complaint on suspicion of complicity in murder . This application was rejected by the Stuttgart public prosecutor in 1982. The reason was that after the Auschwitz decree, Roma were only persecuted as " anti-social ", but not for racist motives.

According to Michael Zimmermann , the Federal Court of Justice also temporarily contributed to the fact that the “learning ability of West German society” was not in good shape, in that the judges did not set the start of racist persecution until the day of the Auschwitz order - and only later this decision corrected. The political scientist Hans Buchheim commented that the Nazi regime had long ceased to be concerned with "averting actual dangers". Rather, the Nazi state "eradicated" also "alleged sources of danger", especially since the Reichsärzteführer Leonardo Conti had called for "a real radical solution".

In March 1983, another public prosecutor's investigation was initiated against Sophie Ehrhardt, which was discontinued in 1986.

Fonts

literature

  • Ulrich Hägele (ed.): Sinti and Roma and us. Marginalization, internment and persecution of a minority. Tübingen 1998, ISBN 3-910090-30-3
  • Joachim S. Hohmann : Robert Ritter and the heirs of criminal biology . "Gypsy research" in National Socialism and in West Germany under the sign of racism. Frankfurt 1991, ISBN 3-631-43984-9
  • Michael Zimmermann: Persecuted, expelled, destroyed. The National Socialist extermination policy against Sinti and Roma. Essen 1989, ISBN 3-88474-137-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Joachim Lang : A nice insight into the research work . Preparatory contributions Tübingen scientists for the forced sterilization and murder of German Sinti. In: Ulrich Hägele (Ed.): Sinti and Roma and we . Exclusion, internment and persecution of a minority, Tübingen 1998, p. 79. (Cited source: Sophie Ehrhardt: Das Bild des Deutschen Menschen . In: Zeitschrift für Ärztliche Fortbildung, Jg. 1934 (1), p. [Around 265]. )
  2. ↑ Uwe Hoßfeld: History of biological anthropology in Germany . From the beginning to the post-war period, Stuttgart 2003.
  3. ↑ a b A mountain of corpses . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1990, pp. 40 f . ( Online - Sept. 3, 1990 ).
  4. ↑ Paul Behrens: Trial, “Vollzigeuner” and “Mischlinge”, the former racial researcher Ruth Kellermann defends her reputation. In: Die Zeit of February 7, 1986 No. 7.
  5. ↑ Ernst Klee : German blood and empty folders . In: Die Zeit from October 12, 2000, No. 42. Available online: Zeit-Archiv
  6. ↑ Hans Joachim Lang: A nice insight into the research work . Preparatory contributions Tübingen scientists for the forced sterilization and murder of German Sinti. In: Ulrich Hägele (Ed.): Sinti and Roma and we . Tübingen 1998, p. 89; Ernst Klee: German blood and empty folders . In: Die Zeit from October 12, 2000, No. 42, available online: Zeit-Archiv . Klee points out that Robert Ritter's whitewashing, which Notker Hammerstein carried out in 1999, was financed by DFG funds. In the reply of the DFG two episodes of ZEIT later, that in the future the complex of racial hygiene and the DFG will be dealt with seriously, one can see a distancing from Hammerstein's “commissioned work” (Klee) with good will.
  7. ↑ Helmut Groß: Didn't know anything . In: Die Zeit from September 11, 1981, No. 38. Zeit-Archiv
  8. ^ Matthias Winter: Continuities in German Gypsy Research and Gypsy Policy . In: Enemy Declaration and Prevention. Contributions to the National Socialist Health and Social Policy 6, Berlin 1988, pp. 135–152.
  9. ↑ Michael Zimmermann: Persecuted, expelled, destroyed . The National Socialist Extermination Policy against Sinti and Roma, Essen 1989.
personal data
SURNAME Ehrhardt, Sophie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Baltic anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Kazan
DATE OF DEATH October 2, 1990