Walter Wuttke

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Walter Wuttke (born February 14, 1941 in Finsterwalde ) is a German medical historian and classical philologist who researched and published pioneering research on medicine under National Socialism .

biography

Wuttke's father was a chief customs inspector, his mother a kindergarten teacher. After graduating from high school in Bremen in 1961, he studied theater , German , philosophy , pedagogy, Latin philology and the history of medicine in Cologne, Bonn and Tübingen. In 1969 he received his doctorate as Dr. phil. in Latin with a thesis on the Hamburg doctor Otto Sperling (1602–1681). From 1970 to 1980 he was a research assistant at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Tübingen (today: Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine), interrupted by a one-year study stay in the USA as a visiting scholar at the History Department of the University of Chicago . After returning from America, he moved from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 1981 to the Ludwig-Uhland Institute in Tübingen. Immediately afterwards he became scientific director at the newly built concentration camp “Documentation Center Oberer Kuhberg” in Ulm until the end of 1984 , where he still lives today.

In 1980 he published "Medicine under National Socialism - a workbook". It is a collection of annotated excerpts from contemporary texts, copies and facsimiles of archive sources as well as images on nine subject areas, such as: B. Health education, obstetrics, alternative medicine and social insurance from the National Socialist point of view as well as the extermination doctrine of National Socialist medicine and professional politics of the medical profession under National Socialism . At the time of publication of the book, research on National Socialist medicine was rudimentary in most areas; the medical profession in particular had not yet been able to find adequate access to their own behavior under National Socialism. The medical historians at the universities had until then largely closed themselves to the topic. The book should encourage reference and facilitate entry with the help of the documents. Nowadays, Wuttke and this work are ascribed a pioneering role in the development of the subject of medicine under National Socialism.

In 1980 in Tübingen a group of students of medicine, education and empirical cultural studies, under the direction of Wuttke, developed the exhibition "People and Health - Healing and Destroying under National Socialism". The exhibition was shown in more than 70 cities and visited by over 100,000 people. A book accompanying the exhibition with detailed commentary was published in 1982.

The documentation of the role of the doctor Karl Haedenkamp (1889–1955) in the workbook as well as in the accompanying book gave the impetus for renaming Cologne's Haedenkampstraße to Herbert-Lewin-Straße in 1986. Haedenkamp was a general practitioner and obstetrician, even before 1933 in the German National People's party engaged, after 1933 member of the NSDAP , the SA and the SS . He took a well-documented racist and anti-Semitic stance. In the course of his work in the Reich Medical Association , he played a leading role in the elimination of Jewish and socialist doctors. After the end of the war , he continued his work in the medical self-administration without interruption and advanced to the position of managing director of the German Medical Association . One year after his death, the street in which the German Medical Association and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians had their seats was named Haedenkamp-Straße at the instigation of the German Medical Association. Wuttke's research prompted the district council of Cologne-Lindenthal to rename the street after the Cologne doctor and Holocaust survivor Herbert Lewin . The square in front of the current headquarters of the German Medical Association and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in Berlin was also named after Herbert Lewin. A biography by Herbert Lewin, based on research by Wuttke, was published as a comic series by Elke Steiner in the Deutsches Ärzteblatt from 2004 to 2005.

On July 21, 1989, he suffered a stroke and has been speech impaired ever since.

In recent years he has researched various groups of victims in and around Ulm . He uncovered that Otto-Elsässer (1886–1962), who was involved in the reconstruction of Ulm as a local politician and in the church sector in the post-war period, made an administrative career during the Nazi era as a member of the NSDAP, while serving as city treasurer and temporary deputy mayor for was responsible for the expropriation and expulsion of Jewish citizens and, as the agent for forced laborers, for the enforcement of forced abortions. In 2009, at Wuttke's suggestion, the municipal council unanimously decided to rename Otto-Elsässer-Weg to Willi-Eckstein-Weg. Willi Eckstein was a Sinto born in Ulm in 1932, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.

Wuttke, like other scientists who dealt early with the topic of medicine under National Socialism and other questions in connection with the Nazi era , was not given a professional career in the university sector. The medical historians established at universities in the 1970s inevitably owed their position to a teacher who began his career during the Nazi era. These scientists then doing research outside the university include Ernst Klee , Karl Heinz Roth , Angelika Ebbinghaus and Götz Aly .

Publications (selection)

  • Wuttke-Groneberg W. Medicine in National Socialism. A work book. Wurmlingen: Schwäbische Verlagsgesellschaft 1980: 423.
  • Wuttke W. The fate of Jewish doctors in Germany. Herbert Lewin. Democratic health care. Vol. 7/8, July / August 1986, 42-45.
  • Wuttke W. The processing of medicine in the “Third Reich” through German medical historiography *. Argument 1989; special volume AS 186: 156–75
  • Wuttke W. "German Medicine" and "Jewish Factory Medicine". On the relationship between natural folk medicine and conventional medicine in National Socialism. In: HvBussche (Hg): Conspicuousness and resistance. Medical science and political opposition in the “Third Reich”. Berlin, Hamburg 1990, pp. 23–54 (Hamburg Contributions to Science, Vol. 6)
  • Wuttke W. ideologies of Nazi medicine. In: Pfeifer, J. (Hg), contempt for human beings and opportunism. On Medicine in the Third Reich, Tübingen 1992, 157–171
  • Wuttke W. O, these people. Life in the Ulm institution "Oberer Riedhof" during National Socialism. Blaubeurer Geographical Booklet. Nürtingen: Denkhaus-Verlag 2005
  • Wuttke W. The suffering and life plans of Sinto Ranco Brantner. Nürtingen: Denkhaus-Verlag 2010.
  • Wuttke W. Eckstein family: life stories of a musician-Sinti family. Weißenhorn: Anton H. Konrad Verlag 2018.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Südwest Presse Online-Dienst GmbH: Dr. Walter Wuttke: Upright, consistent, uncomfortable. February 13, 2016, accessed June 4, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b Wuttke-Groneberg W: Medicine in National Socialism. A work book. 1st edition. Schwäbische Verlagsgesellschaft, Wurmlingen 1980, ISBN 3-88466-006-3 .
  3. ↑ a b Wuttke W. The processing of medicine in the "Third Reich" through German medical historiography *. Argument special volume AS 1989, 186: 156-75.
  4. ↑ Jütte, R (ed.). Medicine and National Socialism: Balance and Perspectives of Research. Wallstein Publishing House. 2011. Kindle version. Item 169
  5. ↑ a b project group “People and Health” (ed.). People and health. Healing and Extermination under National Socialism. Tübingen. Tübingen Association for Folklore eV 1982.
  6. ↑ Schwoch R, Wuttke W. Herbert Lewin and Käte Frankenthal: Two Jewish doctors from Germany. Dtsch Arztebl International 2004; 101 (19): 1319-. https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/article.asp?id=41772
  7. ^ District office Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf: Herbert-Lewin-Platz [1]
  8. ↑ Steiner, Elke. Herbert Lewin. 15 episodes. German medical sheet stitching 40 , 42 , 44 , 46 , 48 , 50 /2003 1-2 , 4 , 6 , 8 , 10 , 12 , 14 , 16 , 18 /2004
  9. ↑ Documentation Center Oberer Kuhberg, Ulm eV Concentration Camp Memorial: Arguing about memory: “Forgotten” victim groups and perpetrator research. Download [2] . Ulm 2015.
  10. ^ Documentation and Culture Center of German Sinti and Roma: Ulm, Willi-Eckstein-Weg. Retrieved June 24, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Wuttke, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medical historian and classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Finsterwalde