Walter Groß (politician, 1904)

Walter Gross (1933)

Walter Groß (born October 21, 1904 in Kassel , † April 25, 1945 in Berlin ) was a German doctor, racial hygienist and National Socialist politician.

Career

Large attended Protestant high schools in Posen and Göttingen . From 1923 he studied in Göttingen , Tübingen and Munich medicine . He completed his studies in 1928 with the state examination and doctorate . He then worked as an assistant at a Braunschweig hospital until 1932 .

In 1925 he joined the NSDAP and had been a member of the NS-Ärztebund since 1932 . From 1932 he was also an employee of the " Public Health " subdivision of the Reich leadership of the NSDAP . In 1933 he founded the "Enlightenment Office for Population Policy and Race Care", of which he was also head in Berlin and which in May 1934 was renamed the " Race Policy Office of the NSDAP ". In 1933 he had forbidden the racial biologist and anthropologist Walter Scheidt , who had refused to produce hereditary health reports, to publish open criticism of racial politics. Groß was a member of the Reichstag since 1936 . In the same year he was awarded the Dietrich Eckart Prize . On February 7, 1940, Rosenberg noted in his diary that he had spoken to Groß about the establishment of an institute for biology and racial studies. This should be in close connection with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society . In this regard, Rosenberg wrote that Eugen Fischer , the director of the institute, should “come to us soon”. The Institute of Biology and Racial Studies was planned as part of the development of the High School of the NSDAP . Stuttgart was chosen as the seat of the institute . In 1942, Groß became head of the main science office in the Rosenberg office . From 1937 until his death he was a member of the Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society.

Groß died in combat operations with the Red Army, which had already penetrated the Berlin urban area, on April 25, 1945 in his private home in Berlin-Schlachtensee. Gross employees questioned later spoke of a 'wanted death'.

effect

Groß was one of the important authors in the early stages of the National Socialist monthly issue . He was the author and editor of several anti-Semitic works such as Rasse und Politik (1934), Der Weltumbruch in the Jewish Myth (1936) and The Racial Prerequisites for Solving the Jewish Question (1943). In the latter work, which was published by the Institute for Research into the Jewish Question and published by Hoheneichen-Verlag , he campaigned for a “ Jew-free ” Europe. Groß 'writings attempted to justify the theses of the National Socialist racial ideology under the guise of scientificity and proved to be particularly militant.

On March 27, 1941, Groß gave a lecture in which he rejected the distinction between Jews and “ first-degree Jewish half-breeds ” and described their equality as “correct and necessary in terms of racial politics”. “Half Jews” should be eliminated from Europe like “full Jews”. In the case of the “quarter Jews”, the increase should be kept as low as possible. This lecture gave the impetus for a coordinated procedure between the Racial Political Office, the party chancellery of Martin Bormann and the Reich Security Main Office and led to the proposal to treat the "mixed Jewish people" like "full Jews" at least in the occupied eastern territories. The radical anti-Semitic forces consistently pursued this line at the Wannsee Conference .

The American political scientist A. James Gregor tried since 1958 to bring the activities of the "International Association for the Advancement of Eugenics and Ethnology" and the International Institute of Sociology , IIS, to a common denominator. Gregor described himself as a supporter of the racial politician Walter Gross; In 1958 Gregor praised the racial concept of the National Socialists in the magazine The Europeans, published by the British fascist Oswald Mosley . Groß described the concept as a “seed” for a “worldview that makes man the creator, the builder of future races”.

Fonts

• The racial prerequisites for the solution of the Jewish question . In: Der Weltkampf, 1941, pp. 52–63.

literature

• Roger Uhle: New people and pure race. Walter Gross and the Race Political Office of the NSDAP (RPA) . Diss. Aachen 1999
• Monika Deniffel: Great, Walter . In: Hermann Weiß: Personenlexikon 1933-1945 . Tosa, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-85492-756-8 , p. 166.
• Michael Grüttner : Biographical Lexicon on National Socialist Science Policy (= Studies on Science and University History. Volume 6). Synchron, Heidelberg 2004, ISBN 3-935025-68-8 , pp. 64-65.

Web links

• Literature by and about Walter Groß in the catalog of the German National Library
• Newspaper article about Walter Groß in the press kit for the 20th century of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Walter Groß in the database of members of the Reichstag

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995 (= Würzburg medical-historical research. Supplement 3; also dissertation Würzburg 1995), ISBN 3-88479-932-0 , pp. 97-99.
2. ↑ Hans-Günther Seraphim: The political diary of Alfred Rosenberg. 1934/35 and 1939/40. Göttingen / Berlin / Frankfurt 1956, p. 122.
3. ^ Jan Björn Potthast: The Jewish Central Museum of the SS in Prague. Opponent Research and Genocide under National Socialism. Frankfurt a. M. / New York 2002, p. 179, ISBN 3-593-37060-3 .
4. ^ Wilfried Scharf: National Socialist monthly books (1930-1944) In: Heinz-Dietrich Fischer (Hrsg.): German magazines of the 17th to 20th century. Verl. Documentation, Pullach bei München 1973, ISBN 3-7940-3603-4 , p. 413. The following contribution by Groß appeared in the first issue: The prophets Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul de Lagarde and Houston Stewart Chamberlain in their meaning for us ( Pp. 29-33).
5. ^ Peter Longerich : Hitler's deputy. Management of the NSDAP and control of the state apparatus by the staff of Hess and Bormann's Party Chancellery , Munich 1992, ISBN 3598110812 , p. 221.