State Academy for Race and Health Care

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The State Academy for Race and Health Care in Dresden was between 1934 and 1945 a National Socialist research and teaching institution for propaganda and training in racial politics. The academy was (also spatially) connected to the German Hygiene Museum and is an expression of the institutionalized acceptance and dissemination of the delusional idea of racial hygiene and racial science in science at the time of National Socialism - thus part of the millions of discrimination, persecution, injury and murder so-called " of racially inferior and völkisch unworthy life ”( Holocaust , war of extermination , forced sterilization , euthanasia , medical experiments ). The academy was closed with the Allied Control Council Act No. 2 for the dissolution and liquidation of the Nazi organizations of October 10, 1945; Participants were punished by the Control Council Directive No. 38 of October 12, 1946.

Foundation, tasks and program

In Saxony, racial propaganda and training was actively supported by Ernst Wegner , a former doctor at the city hospital "Am Kirchberg" in Weimar . Wegner had become State Commissioner for the entire health system in the Free State of Saxony in 1933 and used his position in the German Hygiene Museum for these purposes. Wegner was also a district doctor and head of the Saxony Medical Association. In 1934 he was commissioned to found an academy to be settled in Dresden, in which courses in racial studies were to be held and of which he became rector.

The German Hygiene Museum had already propagated racial hygiene ideas before 1933 and now developed even more far-reaching activities in this area - Dresden was to become the “German 'city of public health'”, as it was called in a draft for the Dresden city council. The Saxon Reich Governor Martin Mutschmann therefore entrusted Wegner in 1933 with the preparatory work for the creation of a teaching facility, the goal of which Wegner defined on April 14, 1934 when the "State Academy for Race and Health Care" was founded:

"The primary task of this academy will be: to convey our racial and health-related scientific knowledge to all bearers of the National Socialist state, initially to all heads of the PO [political organizations of the NSDAP ] and the SA ., The SS ., Hitler Youth and the Reichswehr , the police and the German Labor Front [...], but in addition courses at the academy should also include state officials: judges, public prosecutors, doctors, teachers [...]. ” (Dresdner Anzeiger , 1934)

The first “introductory course” for state and municipal officials and “leaders of the various branches and circles” began immediately after the founding celebrations and was contested by Martin Staemmler , who has been Professor of Racial Hygiene in Leipzig since 1933 and author of the book “Racial Care”, which has been reprinted several times in the Volkish Empire ”. A tour of the state sanatorium and nursing home in Arnsdorf was also included in the program. Further lecturers in the following period were Eduard Schütt and Hermann Alois Boehm .

Complementary research facility

With the State Academy and the German Hygiene Museum, Dresden had facilities that served to propagate racial hygiene and the health-political views of the National Socialists. The still missing institution, which should be researched in this direction, arose with the conversion of the Dresden-Johannstadt City Hospital into the "Rudolf-Hess Hospital - Biological Central Hospital for the German Reich". According to the plans of May 1934, this had to fulfill three main tasks: It was to become a center for race hygiene research, examine the possibilities of a “synthesis of conventional medicine and naturopathy” and the medical profession and the “ Brown Sisters ” promoted the “New Germans” Medicine ”. From an economic point of view, the clinic remained a municipal facility; the additional expenses required, for example the salaries of additional senior physicians, were borne by the Reich Medical Association. One or more doctors at the children's clinic have been shown to have been complicit in the child murder as part of " Aktion T4 " through diagnosis, reporting and transfer .2 After Rudolf Hess' unauthorized flight to England, the hospital was renamed and carried the name Gerhard Wagner .

Conclusion

The State Academy for Race and Health Care was an established and important institution for the dissemination and implementation of the racial hygiene policy under National Socialism. In the triumvirate with the German Hygiene Museum and the Rudolf Heß (or Gerhard Wagner) Hospital, she contributed to developing Dresden into a center for racial hygiene teaching and research in National Socialist Germany.

Literature / web links

Individual evidence

  1. http://www.weimar-im-ns.de/ort22.php
  2. Dr. phil Marina Lienert: Dresden - Center of New Medicine, in: Ärzteblatt Sachsen, Heft 4, 2005 pages 156/157
  3. Lienert ibid. Page 157
  4. Lienert ibid. Page 159