Waldemar Hoven

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Waldemar Hoven during the Nuremberg Trials

Waldemar Hoven (born February 10, 1903 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; †  June 2, 1948 in Landsberg am Lech ) was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and camp doctor in Buchenwald concentration camp .

biography

Hoven grew up in Freiburg as the son of the senior postal assistant Peter Hoven. After completing his school education, he worked in the agricultural sector in Denmark , Sweden and the USA . After returning to Freiburg in 1925, Hoven supported his brother as an employee in his sanatorium, where he did office work. From 1930 Hoven worked as a company reporter for a Baron de Maier in Paris for a high monthly income. In the course of the seizure of power , Hoven returned to Germany because his brother had died. In 1935, Hoven made up his school leaving examination and then studied medicine in Freiburg. Hoven linked his studies with the goal of being able to take over the sanatorium in the future; he later became at least the manager of the profitable sanatorium. Hoven completed his medical studies with an emergency examination in 1939.

After the outbreak of World War II , received Hoven from 1934 member of the SS (SS no. 244594) and from 1937 the NSDAP , an infantry training . From October 1939, Hoven was deployed as an auxiliary medical officer and, in 1940, as a medical officer of the Waffen SS in the SS hospital of the Buchenwald concentration camp . From July 1942, Hoven, now SS-Hauptsturmführer, acted as a medical officer in the Buchenwald concentration camp and from January 1943 also took over the deputy head of the department for typhus and virus research of the hygiene institute of the Waffen-SS in Buchenwald under Erwin Ding-Schuler . Hoven's representation was temporarily taken over by the head of pathology in Buchenwald, Heinrich Plaza . The lead inmate nurse at the typhus research station was Arthur Dietzsch .

Hoven, called “the beautiful Waldemar” in the camp, carried out gas edema studies as well as typhus and other experiments with vaccines on selected prisoners together with Ding-Schuler. In addition, he selected sick inmates who were killed in Operation 14f13 and personally murdered inmates using Evipan and phenol injections . After the end of the war, Hoven was found to have hundreds of ordered and self-carried out killings.

At the same time he intervened in the camp's internal power struggles on behalf of political prisoners. Buchenwald prisoner Benedikt Kautsky wrote about Hoven in 1946:

“To be honest, I never really got to know him. On the one hand he took part without hesitation in all the hoses, experiments with typhus, etc., to which thousands of prisoners fell victim; on the other hand, he openly allied himself with the political prisoners who ruled the precinct, advocated medical and hygienic improvements in the camp, and took himself more ill-treated Prisoners and played a decisive role in internal camp policy. In the struggle between the prisoner groups, he was clearly on the side of the political and helped them in the fight against the criminals wherever he could. He went so far as to act as an enforcer of remote judgments against criminals. Many a spy and zinc man, many a tormentor and smuggler who ran his trade at the expense of his fellow inmates died of his hand, at least with his help. "

Hoven received his doctorate in July 1943 from the University of Freiburg to become Dr. med. with a dissertation on the treatment of tuberculosis : attempts to treat pulmonary tuberculosis by inhalation of carbon colloid . For this research work, Hoven conducted a series of experiments on concentration camp prisoners , at least five of whom died as a result of the experiments. The work rated "very good" by Hermann Dold was, as it turned out after the end of the war, written by the concentration camp inmates Gustav Wegerer and Kurt Sitte .

Hoven was arrested in the course of the Buchenwald corruption affair involving Karl Otto Koch in September 1943 and charged with other suspects in an SS court. He has been found to have committed murder, bodily harm resulting in death, and other criminal offenses. Hoven is said to have killed the imprisoned Hauptscharführer named Köhler, who was a potential witness in the corruption proceedings against Karl Otto Koch and Ilse Koch , by injecting aconite to protect Ilse Koch, with whom he allegedly had an affair. The SS judge Konrad Morgen sentenced Hoven to death in the spring of 1945. Hoven was imprisoned in Buchenwald for 18 months until he was pardoned due to the prevailing shortage of doctors and released on April 2, 1945.

Waldemar Hoven during the Nuremberg medical trial

After the Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated, Hoven was arrested and charged in the Nuremberg doctors' trial. As it turned out that his doctoral thesis had not been written by himself, the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg rejected his doctorate in 1947 . Hoven was sentenced to death on August 20, 1947 for war crimes , crimes against humanity and membership in a criminal organization, the SS . The sentence was carried out on June 2, 1948 by hanging in Landsberg prison .

Quote

“It should have been known in general, and in particular in German scientific circles, that the SS did not have any scientists worth mentioning. It is obvious that the experiments carried out in the concentration camps with IG preparations were only in the interest of IG (Farben), who tried by all means to determine the effectiveness of their preparations or - I would like to say - dirty work in To let the SS make concentration camps. The IG (Farben) is careful not to let this fact appear to the outside world, but to conceal the details of its attempts, in order to then [...] take advantage of it for itself. It was not the SS, but the IG (colors) who took the initiative in these experiments in the concentration camps. "

literature

  • Ernst Klee : Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. 3. Edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1997, ISBN 3-596-14906-1 .
  • Ernst Klee: The person lexicon for the Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007. ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8
  • Eugen Kogon : The SS State: The System of the German Concentration Camps ; Frechen: Komet, 2000; ISBN 3-89836-107-1 (= Munich: Heyne, 1995 31 ; ISBN 3-453-02978-X ; Reinbek near Hamburg: Kindler, 1974)
  • Volker Klimpel: Doctors Deaths: Unnatural and Violent Death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix , Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3826027698
  • David A. Hackett: The Buchenwald Report: Report on the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar , CH Beck, 2002, ISBN 3406475981 .
  • Harry Stein, Buchenwald Memorial (ed.): Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937–1945 , volume accompanying the permanent historical exhibition, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1999, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 .
  • Wolfgang Proske (Ed.): Perpetrators - helpers - free riders. Nazi victims from southern Baden (=  perpetrators - helpers - free riders . Band 6 ). 1st edition. Kugelberg, Gerstetten 2017, ISBN 978-3-945893-06-7 , pp. 176 ff .

Web links

Commons : Waldemar Hoven  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Buchenwald typhus experiments documents  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ taeter-buchenwalds.de
  2. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main, 1997, p. 40
    Eugen Kogon: Der SS-Staat. The system of the German concentration camps , 1974, p. 352f.
  3. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main, 1997, p. 40
    Volker Klimpel: Doctors-Tode: Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix , 2005, p. 32
  4. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main, 1997, p. 40
  5. ↑ Eugen Kogon: The SS State. The system of the German concentration camps , 1974, p. 296f.
  6. ↑ Volker Klimpel: Doctors Death: Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix ; Würzburg 2005, p. 33
  7. ↑ Benedikt Kautsky , Teufel und Verdammte - Experiences and insights from seven years in German concentration camps, Vienna 1961 (original Zurich 1946), p. 120.
  8. ^ Entry on Hermann Dold in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis (accessed on July 28, 2015)
  9. ↑ Eugen Kogon: The SS State. The system of the German concentration camps. Munich, 1979, p. 302. Quoted from: Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, the Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main, 1997, pp. 40f.
    Volker Klimpel: Doctors-Tode: Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix , 2005, p. 32
  10. ↑ David A. Hackett: The Buchenwald Report: Report on the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar , CH Beck, 2002, p. 250
  11. ↑ The game is over - Arthur Nebe . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1950, p. 23 ( online - February 23, 1950 ). Eugen Kogon: The SS state. The system of the German concentration camps , 1974, p. 305f.
  12. ↑ Volker Klimpel: Doctors Death: Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix , 2005, p. 32
  13. ↑ Waldemar Hovens affidavit of October 3, 1947 (Nuremberg documents NI-12182, quoted from: AStA TU Berlin (ed.): ... from aniline to forced labor - the path of a monopoly through history. On the emergence and development of the German chemical industry , A documentation of the IG Farben working group of the Federal Conference of Chemistry Student Associations , 1994 (PDF file; 4.4 MB) - typhus tests, p. 85 and Ernst Klee, 1997, p. 305
personal data
SURNAME Hoven, Waldemar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German concentration camp doctor, SS member and war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Freiburg in Breisgau
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1948
Place of death Landsberg am Lech