Werner Fischer (physician)

Werner Fischer (born July 30, 1895 in Dortmund , † April 1945 near Elstal ) was a German serologist. From 1938 he headed the serological department of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and carried out various experiments to develop a serological race test, including in 1942 on Sinti and Roma in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Life

Fischer had as a soldier in the First World War took part and after the war a volunteer corps connected. He started at the University of Marburg to study and in 1919 - as George Löning , Hans Meyer , Kurt Hofmeier and Hermann Hengsberger  - the Corps Hasso Nassovia recipiert . When he was inactive , he moved to the Medical Academy in Düsseldorf and the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . He passed the state examination in Freiburg in 1921 and worked at the Medical Polyclinic in Marburg from 1922. In 1923 he was awarded a Dr. med. doctorate , when he was already at the Institute of Pathology of hospitals Dortmund worked. In 1924 he moved to the Barmen maternity home and soon afterwards to the Evangelical Hospital in Oberhausen . In 1925 he finally joined the state institute for experimental therapy in Frankfurt am Main . Here he researched until 1932 in the serological department with Hans Schlossberger and Kurt Laubenheimer (1877–1955). In 1932/33, Fischer stayed at the National Institute for Medical Research in London on a Rockefeller Foundation grant . He then became an assistant to Ernst Rodenwaldt , director of the Hygiene Institute at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . Fischer completed his habilitation at Rodenwaldt in 1935 and became a lecturer in serology in Heidelberg in 1936. Here he took over the serological department of the Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, which had been assigned to the Hygiene Institute in 1936. The department not only worked as a serological laboratory for the clinics of the medical faculty, but between 1936 and 1938 Fischer also worked on a DFG- funded project on the topic of "Cancer and Defense".

Fischer was a member of the storm department . In May 1937 he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party . On September 1, 1938, he was appointed to succeed Ludwig Lange , who was retiring due to old age . Fischer brought research on blood groups to the Robert Koch Institute . There he headed the new serodiagnostic department, which was mainly responsible for diagnosing blood groups and syphilis .

In Heidelberg, at the suggestion of Rodenwaldt, Fischer was still engaged in experiments to differentiate between different races by means of serological tests. He compared the blood serum “white” and “ black ” with each other in series tests . The aim was to develop a serological race certificate. His work formed the basis of the experiments that Karl Horneck carried out on French colonial soldiers prisoner of war since 1941. In 1942, with the permission of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, Fischer carried out serological tests on around 40 gypsies in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and, at Himmler's suggestion, also on Jews . Little is known about the extent and type of these human experiments, especially since the research documents have not been preserved in the archive of the Robert Koch Institute. Fischer was apparently planning a high risk immunization from person to person, i. H. the victims would have been injected with blood sera from members of different “races”. With such an approach, the victims are at risk of allergic shocks , hemolysis , intravascular coagulation disorders and thromboembolism . Fischer had suggested such attempts at least to Horneck. Michael Zimmermann suspects that the project was tacitly canceled.

Fischer died at the end of the Second World War in April 1945 under unexplained circumstances, whereby it is said that he died in combat operations.

Fonts

• About the function of the carotid gland . Diss. Med. Marburg 1923.
  • Excerpts from: Jahrbuch d. med. Faculty of Marburg . 1923-24.
  • also: Journal for the entire experimental medicine 39 (1924), pp. 477-486.
• About blood group characteristics in rabbits . In: Zeitschrift für Immunitätsforschung 86 (1935), pp. 97-129.

literature

• Annette Hinz-Wessels: The Robert Koch Institute under National Socialism. Berlin 2008.
• Michael Hubenstorf: "But it seems to me that you have lost nothing". On the exodus of scientists from Berlin's state research institutes in the field of public health. In: Wolfram Fischer et al. (Ed.): Exodus of sciences from Berlin. Berlin 1994, pp. 355-460.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kösener Copslisten 1960, 99/943.
2. ↑ Dissertation: About the function of the carotid gland .
3. ↑ Habilitation thesis: Blood group properties in rabbits .
4. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. Frankfurt a. Main 1997, p. 166.
5. ↑ Hinz-Wessels, Robert Koch Institute , p. 85; Anne Cottebrune: The Plannable Man. The German Research Foundation and Human Heredity, 1920-1970. Stuttgart 2008, p. 194.
6. ^ Michael Zimmermann: Racial Utopia and Genocide. The National Socialist "Solution to the Gypsy Question". Hamburg 1996, p. 351.
7. ↑ Hinz-Wessels, The Robert Koch Institute in National Socialism , p. 117.