Werner Heyde

Werner Heyde - pseudonym Fritz Sawade - (born April 25, 1902 in Forst / Lausitz ; † February 13, 1964 in Butzbach / Hessen ) was a German psychiatrist and neurologist .

Heyde was clinic director and professor for psychiatry and neurology at the University of Würzburg , politician (NSDAP), high-ranking SS member and expert for the Gestapo.

As head of the medical department of the front organization " Central Office T4 " and the first T4 senior expert during the Nazi era , he was responsible for the murder of hospital inmates and concentration camp inmates.

After the end of the Second World War he practiced under the pseudonym Dr. Fritz Sawade worked as a doctor for several years. For his crimes committed Heyde five days before the opening of the trial in prison suicide .

Life

Childhood, youth and professional training

Werner Heyde was the son of a cloth manufacturer. In autumn 1914 the family moved to nearby Cottbus , where Heyde passed his Abitur in March 1920 as the best in class.

While at school he volunteered to take part in the First World War . From the summer of 1918 at the latest, he was employed with the group telephone department 656 in Reval , Estonia. Even after the armistice in November 1918, he remained in Estonia as a member of a volunteer corps until early 1919 . During the Kapp Putsch in March 1920, he took part on the side of the putschists in fighting in the Cottbus area. Heyde had volunteered for two months in the 52nd Infantry Regiment under Major Bruno Ernst Buchrucker .

From May 1920 Werner Heyde studied medicine in Berlin, Freiburg , Marburg , Rostock and Würzburg . He took the physics in July 1922 in Marburg , in May 1925 he received his doctorate after the state examination with grade 1 in Würzburg. He then worked for a year as a medical intern at the city ​​hospitals in Cottbus, the Wittenauer Heilstätten in Berlin and the Würzburg University Psychiatric Clinic. Heyde received his license to practice medicine on June 8, 1926 , after which he was assistant to Martin Reichardt , who promoted him. At times he was also a research fellow at the Psychiatric Clinic in Würzburg. From November 1928 he switched to the chemical institute of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich for two years . Back in Würzburg , Werner Heyde completed his habilitation with the thesis Studies on Brain Ferments . On August 10, 1932, Heyde was accepted as a private lecturer in psychiatry and neurology at the University of Würzburg, after he had been employed as a regular assistant at the mental hospital there since July 1931.

Heyde married Erika Precht in February 1931. The marriage had two children.

Joined the NSDAP and the SS skull and crossbones associations

In March 1933 Werner Heyde met a prominent patient: SS- Oberführer Theodor Eicke from Ludwigshafen was admitted to the Würzburg clinic to examine his mental state , probably after disputes with internal party opponents, at the instigation of the Gauleiter of the Bavarian Palatinate, Josef Bürckel . Eicke should probably be withdrawn from circulation via a "psychiatric treatment". Heyde, commissioned with an official medical report, saw no signs of mental or brain disease in Eicke. On the contrary, according to Heyde in a letter to Heinrich Himmler , Eicke had "behaved in an exemplary manner here and was very pleasantly noticeable due to his calm, controlled nature, he by no means gave the impression of an intriguing personality." Heyde's letter, which was decisive for his rehabilitation probably contributed, Eicke opened a steep career: As the first commandant of the Dachau concentration camp , he organized the SS regime over prisoners before he became inspector of the concentration camps and leader of the SS death's head associations . According to Heyde, he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 on Eicke's recommendation ( membership number 3,068,165).

From October 1934 to May 1936 Heyde was an employee of the Racial Political Office in Würzburg, and from 1935 as district office manager. At the same time, as an assessor in the local hereditary health court , he decided on applications for compulsory sterilization . In May 1936 Heyde turned to Arthur Julius Gütt , the co-author of the official commentary on the sterilization law, with a memorandum on the practice of the hereditary health courts . Gütt referred Heyde to Ernst-Robert Grawitz, then head of the medical office in the SS main office . Heyde and Grawitz agreed that Heyde would join the SS on June 1, 1936 as Hauptsturmführer (SS No. 276.656).

Heyde was assigned to the medical department of the SS-Totenkopfverband and was given the title of "Head of the psychiatric department at the leader of the SS-Totenkopfverband / concentration camp" - so he was employed by Eicke. He set up the review of the “hereditary health” of the concentration camp prisoners, a task which - according to Heyde - “was particularly urgent given the psychological and physical inferiority of the far greater part of the camp inmates.” Heyde prepared reports that were forwarded to the hereditary health courts and was the basis for their decisions about the sterilization or castration of the prisoners. In addition, Heyde worked as a senior expert for the barracked SS troops ( SS disposable troops and SS death's head associations) and as an advisory specialist in the SS hospital in Berlin and prepared reports for the Secret State Police Office .

His extensive work for the SS did not detract from Heyde's further career at the University of Würzburg : in the run-up to Heyde's appointment as associate professor on April 5, 1939, it was expressly mentioned as "honorable" and served at the same time as a justification for the small number of scientific publications . Previously, on April 1, 1934, Heyde had become senior physician at the university neurological clinic and head of the affiliated polyclinic. With effect from December 1, 1939 Heyde became - determined by the Reich Health Authority and against the express will of the Medical Faculty - successor to Martin Reichardt at the Würzburg Chair for Psychiatry and Neurology and Director of the Psychiatric and Nervous Clinic at the University of Würzburg. The “ Chancellery of the Führer ” and the Reich Ministry of Education had previously campaigned for his appointment .

Heyde was homosexual, which was a problem for him. He was treated by Arthur Kronfeld , the co-founder of the Institute for Sexology . On October 24, 1939, an internal SS investigation against Heyde was stopped: allegations that Heyde had committed homosexual acts had proven to be incorrect. Such allegations against Heyde had been made at the end of 1935 by SS-Untersturmführer Süttinger, concerning his student days in 1927 and 1928, in the course of the investigation against the Würzburg wine merchant Leopold Obermayer . The investigations of the Gestapo and the judiciary at that time were not pursued further in January 1936, because Heyde was needed as an expert in a murder trial or was possibly protected by Eicke. Süttinger was released from the SS on November 3, 1939.

Accomplice in action T4

Probably from the end of July 1939 Werner Heyde was involved in the preparation for the killing of the mentally ill and disabled, the so-called " Action T4 ". Previously, the Chancellery of the Führer (KdF) under Philipp Bouhler had received an oral order from Hitler to carry out the "adult euthanasia". The KdF was already in charge of the so-called “ child euthanasia ”. An advisory committee made up of staff from the law firm, a representative of the Reich Ministry of the Interior and several influential psychiatrists, including Heyde, dealt with the preparations for Action T4 . The topics of the deliberations were likely to have been the organization, the procedure and the secrecy of the planned mass killings and the delimitation and selection of the sick.

To conceal the responsibility of state and party offices, the central office T4 was founded, which appeared in correspondence under various cover names, including as the "Reichsarbeitsgemeinschaft für Heil- und Pflegeenstalten" (RAG). The RAG was established around October 1939 as the medical department of the central office, and Werner Heyde was its medical director from May 1940 at the latest. According to witnesses, all fundamental questions could not be decided without him. He conducted all correspondence with the experts and sanatoriums and nursing homes and prepared statements on protests against the murders.

From October 9, 1939, registration forms were sent to all sanatoriums and nursing homes with which the following patients were to be recorded:

• those suffering from schizophrenia , epilepsy , "nonsense" and neurological end states, as far as they could not be used for work in institutions or only for mechanical work;
• all criminally insane;
• Patients who have been in institutions for at least five years;
• all non-German patients stating their race.

Letter from Heydes to the expert Hermann Pfannmüller dated November 12, 1940

The registration forms were sent to the RAG via Herbert Linden , the head of the health department in the Reich Ministry of the Interior . Here they were registered and photocopies made for three reviewers . The experts usually only made a decision based on the information on the registration form: If, in their opinion, the patient should be killed, they entered a red “+” in a box with a black border on the registration form; a blue "-" meant that the patient should be kept alive. If the appraiser could not make up his mind, he entered a “?”. The final decision was made by a senior expert based on the three available reports. Werner Heyde (since 1939) and Herbert Linden acted as chief appraisers. Linden was later replaced by Hermann Paul Nitsche , who also became Heyde's deputy in the RAG. Only in cases of doubt was the patient's medical record used to decide about the fate of the patient. Institutions that refused to fill out the registration forms or were suspected of providing false information were visited by medical committees of "Aktion T4", who filled out or checked the registration forms there. Werner Heyde headed such medical commissions several times.

The patients destined for murder were gassed with carbon monoxide in the specially converted killing centers in Bernburg , Brandenburg , Grafeneck , Hadamar , Hartheim and Sonnenstein . Around 70,000 people died in this way between January 1940 and August 1941. Heyde had taken part in a "test gassing" in Brandenburg in January 1940. The decision to use carbon monoxide had been made with the assistance of Heydes: He had consulted with the Würzburg pharmacologist Ferdinand Flury .

Action T4 was probably extended to include prisoners in the concentration camps at the end of March 1941 under the term “ Special Treatment 14f13 ”: The aforementioned medical commissions - some of which were headed by Werner Heydes - selected prisoners in the concentration camps who were then gassed in the killing centers. It is estimated that around 10,000 concentration camp prisoners were murdered in this way in 1941 alone.

On April 23, 1941, Werner Heyde and his superior Viktor Brack spoke to the executive minister of justice, Franz Schlegelberger, at a meeting of public prosecutors and presidents of the higher regional courts . They presented Aktion T4, showed Hitler's 1939 letter and mentioned that Hitler had refused to pass a formal law on “euthanasia” for reasons of foreign policy.

Probably in December 1941 Werner Heyde handed over the management of Aktion T4 to Paul Nitsche. The exact reasons for his departure could not be clarified, according to later information from Viktor Brack, the reasons lay in Heyde's person. According to statements by Hans Hefelmann , Reinhard Heydrich had requested Heyde to be replaced because Heyde was homosexual. During interrogations, Heyde confessed to "experiences in the homosexual field". In the matter that had been declared a secret Reich affair, Himmler recommended Heydrich that Heyde should remain in the SS: “I actually don't want to dismiss the professor. I think he's very sensible and really completely saved. "

Heyde provided an expert opinion on Waldemar Hoven , who was arrested in September 1943 . As an SS doctor at the Buchenwald concentration camp, he was suspected of murdering witnesses in corruption proceedings against the Buchenwald camp commandant. Heydes wrote a report to SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger from April 18, 1944 about a trip to Denmark with Frits Clausen . Clausen, doctor and party leader of the Danish National Socialists , had reported to the Waffen SS after his party's lack of success . Before the trip, the doctor last worked in the Würzburg clinic under Heyde. Heyde was promoted several times in the SS, for example on January 30, 1941 to SS-Sturmbannführer, on April 20, 1943 to SS-Obersturmbannführer and on April 20, 1945 to SS-Standartenführer. On February 21, 1944, he received the SS skull ring .

During his work at Aktion T4 and beyond until the end of the war, Heyde kept his chair in Würzburg. In 1942, under the professorship of Heydes, Joachim Haase wrote an overview of the mortality and life expectancy of the mentally ill male in Franconia . At the university neurological clinic there, doctors from Aktion T4 received further training, and Heyde also won university graduates such as Klaus Endruweit as employees of Aktion T4. In 1942 Heyde was involved in the killing of the Polish slave laborer Rostecki: On June 22, 1942, the Reich Security Main Office ordered the execution of Rostecki. Heyde had previously asked the Würzburg state police to pick up the patient from his clinic, as this was not a custody facility for “subhumans of different origins”. Heyde refused to kill Rostecki in the university clinic, but promised the police that he would help with the murder. Rostecki died in July 1942 on the way to Nuremberg.

From November 1941, Heyde was also head of an SS hospital for brain injured people, which was affiliated with the Würzburg clinic. Between April 1943 and March 1945 there was a satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp in the clinic , the “initiator” of which was Heyde. The up to 58 prisoners in the subcamp were busy with construction work in the clinic area. After a heavy air raid on Würzburg, the SS hospital was relocated to Denmark in March 1945 and rebuilt in Gråsten under Heyde's direction .

Under the name of Dr. Fritz Sawade in Flensburg

On May 28, 1945 Heyde was interned by the British military in the Fårhus camp in Denmark near Flensburg. On October 9, 1945, he was first transferred to the Gadeland internment camp , then in July 1946 to the Eselheide internment camp near Paderborn. During his internment, Heyde met several people who later helped him go into hiding in Schleswig-Holstein . The chair holder was removed from office on July 26, 1945.

On February 13, 1947, Heyde was handed over to the German judiciary after the Frankfurt am Main district court had issued an arrest warrant against him. At the beginning of April 1947 Heyde was transferred to Nuremberg, because the defense at the Nuremberg doctors' trial had requested him to be a witness. In the course of these proceedings, Heyde was seriously incriminated by witnesses and documents. However, Heyde did not appear as a witness in the medical trial. On the way back to Frankfurt on July 25, 1947, Heyde jumped from a moving military truck in Würzburg. Heyde was able to go into hiding for the next twelve years. According to his own account, he came to Schleswig-Holstein on foot or by hitchhiking, where he first worked as a freelance gardener in Mönkeberg near Kiel, then as a farm worker for various farmers. With the help of forged discharge papers as a war returnee, Heyde received official identification in the name of Fritz Sawade. He gave Triebel east of the Neisse as his place of birth , making it almost impossible to verify his information at the time.

In 1948 Heyde made contact with his family again, who later lived in Bavaria. His wife, Erika Heyde, received pension payments from 1952 onwards, because she said her husband was missing. She was sentenced to one year in prison for fraud in 1962.

The Flensburg-Mürwik sports school , where the last government of the Reich stayed in May 1945 and had been a sports doctor on the Heyde since the late 1940s.

At the end of 1949 Heyde received his false name Dr. Fritz Sawade got a job as a sports doctor at the sports school in Flensburg - Mürwik . In the Westliche Höhe district , where a number of Nazi greats went into hiding after the war, he owned a row house at Walter-Flex-Weg 16 . With the support of the physician Hans Glatzel , to whom he revealed his true identity, he was given the opportunity to create free neurological reports for the Upper Insurance Office in Schleswig-Holstein. In this activity he soon achieved an above-average income: by the time he was arrested in 1959, he had drawn up around 7,000 reports for various authorities and institutions.

Heyde's arrest on November 12, 1959 was the result of anger of the Kiel medical professor Helmuth Reinwein over the judiciary. The trigger was a civil lawsuit by the professor because of nocturnal disturbances from the house next door. Reinwein felt himself abandoned by the judiciary in his neighborhood dispute with the Troglodytia Kiel team and threatened to make public his knowledge of Heyde, who had been working under a false name since 1951 as a court expert, especially in social courts. When Schleswig-Holstein state authorities found out about this, Heyde was asked for the first time on November 4, 1959 to present his license to practice medicine. Heyde then left Flensburg. After a manhunt marked by various mishaps, he surrendered to the authorities in Frankfurt am Main on November 12, 1959. He had previously consulted with the two Würzburg professors Martin Reichardt and Hans Rietschel , who knew his life. At this point in time, Heinz Wolf was the chief public prosecutor in Frankfurt, who had already helped other high-ranking Nazi officials such as Kurt Bode to obtain Persil certificates. Heyde faced this chief public prosecutor's office.

Pretrial detention and suicide

Soon after his arrest, it turned out that a number of lawyers and medical professionals in Schleswig-Holstein had knowledge of the identity of Fritz Sawade with Werner Heyde, who was wanted by arrest warrant: for example, the former Kiel professor of neurology and psychiatry, Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt , had in December In 1954, the President of the Schleswig-Holstein State Social Court in Schleswig was made aware of the identity in writing. The president of the court handed the letter back to Creutzfeldt without taking action against Heyde. Creutzfeldt also failed to share his knowledge with the search authorities. In 1961 an investigative committee of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament was able to prove this knowledge to 18 top officials and public figures. The circle of those who knew of such rumors must have been much larger: the legend of the “simple neurologist Dr. Sawade ”and Heydes' knowledge and skills differ. In parallel to the work of the investigative committee, investigative proceedings were initiated against several von Heydes confidants on the grounds of preferential treatment, but in no case did they result in criminal proceedings.

The Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office under Fritz Bauer took over the investigation against Heyde . An extensive indictment was drawn up by May 1962 that reconstructed Aktion T4 and later became an important basis for historical research on Nazi euthanasia. Heyde was charged with “insidiously, cruelly and deliberately killing at least 100,000 people”. The opening of the trial against Werner Heyde and the co-defendants Gerhard Bohne , Hans Hefelmann and Friedrich Tillmann before the Limburg Regional Court was scheduled for February 18, 1964. Heyde evaded the process by taking his own life on February 13, 1964 in the Butzbach prison .

“I stand calm before God and submit to his saying. I didn't mean anything bad as far as I can tell as a person. He will decide. ”With these words, Heyde's nine-page farewell letter ends, in which he justified his suicide with“ self-respect and protest ”.

Medicine and crime

“Of around 90,000 doctors working in Germany at the time, around 350 committed medical crimes. That still leaves an impressive number, especially when you consider the scale of the crime. But it was only a fraction of the entire medical profession, about a three-hundredth. But isn't that more worrying: every three hundredth doctor is a criminal? That was a relationship that one could never have found in the German medical profession. Why now?
But that doesn't get to the point. Three hundred and fifty were immediate criminals - but there was a machine that enabled them, or gave them the chance, to transform. "

- Alexander Mitscherlich

Heyde belonged to the so-called war youth generation, a generation for whose political socialization the German defeat in World War I and the troubled early years of the Weimar Republic were decisive. For Heyde's parents, this time was associated with serious social decline: According to Heyde's own statements, the father had used an accident in 1908 as an opportunity to sell the cloth factory and then to become involved in the upbringing of his children to a very unusual degree living on the proceeds from the factory's sales. He signed war bonds that became worthless after defeat; in the inflation of 1923 the remaining wealth was largely decimated.

Like many later National Socialists, Heyde was a member of a free corps and participated in the Kapp Putsch. However, there is no evidence of any organized political activity by Heyde during the Weimar Republic. Later political statements indicate that he is right-wing.

The entry into the NSDAP - with fundamental agreement with the goals and methods of the party - was also determined by opportunism and concern for one's own career. The acquaintance of Eicke gave Heyde a top-class entry into the SS. His work in the concentration camps from 1936 coincided with a change in the function of the camps: The opponents were now defined as those who the National Socialists viewed as deviating from a "healthy" state of the people were: so-called anti-social, professional and habitual criminals.

Action T4 represented the application of this “racist general prevention” to the mentally ill and a radicalization of the methods: The method was now also the deliberate killing of the “deviants”. The Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main came to the following assessment in a decision of January 4, 1963 about the assessment system established for this purpose: “Rather, everything suggests that the 'assessments' are mere disguising formalities to conceal the true nature and purpose of the actions have been. This emerges with great clarity from the scanty documents that the experts had at their disposal for assessing the individual case, and the volatility with which the life and death of the individual patients were decided in mass assessments. " Euthanasia was very well aware of the legal dubiousness of their actions, show their ultimately failed efforts to find a legal basis for Action T4. Heyde, so it is said in the already cited decision of the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court of January 4, 1963, played a decisive role in the planning and implementation of the actions: “He could, like no other, the real objective, the necessary camouflage and have a complete overview of the actual implementation of the mass killings; he also knew that Hitler had refused to legalize the mass killings outwardly by means of a formal law. “Heyde was by no means a recipient of orders, he expressed his opinion with commitment and came into conflict with his superior Viktor Brack, who later started his cooperation characterized by Heyde as "not particularly fruitful".

Heyde's post-war activity under the name of Dr. Fritz Sawade sheds light on the handling of the National Socialist violent crimes in the 1950s and the widespread willingness to "draw a line" under the past: In Flensburg it was "practically common knowledge, especially in medical circles, that the name Dr. Sawade was a pseudonym. When the name Sawade was mentioned, you blinked your eyes and kept quiet ”, so later one of Heydes' confidants, Professor Glatzel. To another confidante it would have seemed like a “breach of trust” or “straightforward denunciation” to reveal one's own knowledge about one's colleague in hiding to the authorities. After Heyde's arrest, this behavior was discussed, but it was also complained that there was no discussion of this behavior in the medical profession.

At the end of the 1950s, the German public's view of their own past changed: in particular, the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial made it clear that a large part of the Nazi violent crimes had not been investigated and punished. The investigations by the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor's Office and the Kiel investigative committee as well as Heyde's suicide immediately before the start of the trial were accompanied by in some cases extensive media reports.

In his farewell letter, Heyde commented on his involvement in the T4 campaign and his motives: “I did not press myself into euthanasia. It became clear to the professors, directors and other psychiatrists who had gathered in the initial discussions that the euthanasia would be carried out one way or another. In the face of death, I solemnly assure you, for us participating doctors it was never a question of the elimination of useless eaters, as it is now popular to portray, never even just of life unworthy of life, as Binding-Hoche called it, but of meaningless existence of beings who, as in the case of child reuthanasia, which I am not responsible for, could either never become human or for whom, as in the case of adults, the specifically human element had been irretrievably lost and who - may one assert the opposite as much as one wants - often enough eke out their existence under unworthy conditions . I cannot consider myself or the other doctors involved as guilty in the legal sense. "

Committee of Inquiry

The two chairmen of the investigative committee in the Kiel state parliament , Paul Rohloff and Heinz Adler , came to a different assessment of Heyde's motives after visiting Heyde in pre-trial detention: “Heyde couldn't speak of a sense of guilt. He is an ambitious and extraordinarily assertive person, to whom his career has probably gone above all else. "

The committee of inquiry was set up in December 1959 to investigate how it could be possible that Werner Heyde could remain undetected for so long. The committee of inquiry met 43 sessions from January 1960 to July 1961 and heard 60 witnesses. The final report in June 1961 lists 18 names of people who knew Heyde's true identity, including professors, judges and civil servants. The state parliament unanimously passed a declaration in which it demanded that "those who cover the wrongdoers should be brought to justice". The investigative proceedings did not result in any criminal consequences because of favoritism for the 18 confidants known by name.

Privy Adolf Voss , Attorney General for Schleswig-Holstein, was approved his premature retirement on 28 December 1960th Voss had only submitted his application for retirement on December 27th. Voss was to be heard by the committee of inquiry in January 1961. Since, according to the attestations, his health was affected for a short time, Voss could not appear before the committee. The Schleswig-Holstein Minister of Justice, Bernhard Leverenz , had previously commissioned the attorney general Voss, who had confided in , to investigate the alleged confidant.

Volkmar Hoffmann, a reporter for the Frankfurter Rundschau , was sentenced to six months in prison for defamation . He had u. a. wrote: “Even Prime Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel ( CDU ) and Minister of Education Osterloh or even the whole cabinet? - had known for months that under the name of Dr. Sawade hid the wanted euthanasia doctor and SS standard leader Professor Werner Heyde. "

Aftermath

The Heyde story was filmed in the GDR in 1963 under the title The Heyde-Sawade Affair .

The painter Gerhard Richter learned in the early sixties that his former father-in-law Heinrich Eufinger had worked with Heyde. In 1965 Richter not only painted his aunt Marianne , who was a victim of the euthanasia crime, but also portrayed Heyde's arrest in an oil painting in the same year. After 40 years in private ownership, the picture was taken by Christie's auctioned in New York. The work was knocked down to the American art dealer Larry Gagosian for $ 2.816 million ; the estimated value was between $ 2.0 and 3.0 million.

literature

• Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945 (=  Würzburg Medical History Research , Supplement 3). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (also: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), pp. 42 and 87.
• Norbert Frei (Ed.): Hitler's Elites after 1945. dtv, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-34045-2 .
• Werner E. Gerabek : Heyde, Werner. In: Werner E. Gerabek, Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 592 f.
• Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: The Heyde / Sawade affair: lawyers and doctors in Schleswig-Holstein cover the Nazi euthanasia doctor Prof. Dr. Werner Heyde and remain unpunished. In: Helge Grabitz (ed.): The normality of crime. Berlin 1994, pp. 444-479.
• Klaus-Detlev Godau-Schüttke: The Heyde / Sawade affair. 2nd Edition. Nomos-Verlag, Baden-Baden 2001, ISBN 3-7890-7269-9 .
• Hermann Hennermann: Werner Heyde and his time in Würzburg. In: Gerhardt Nissen , Gundolf Keil (ed.): Psychiatry on the way to science. Psychiatry-historical symposium on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the opening of the "Psychiatric Clinic of the Royal University of Würzburg". Thieme, Stuttgart / New York 1985, ISBN 3-13-671401-6 , pp. 55-61.
• Friedrich Karl Kaul : Nazi murder action T 4 . Verlag Volk und Gesundheit, Berlin (GDR) 1973.
• Friedrich Karl Kaul: Dr. Sawade makes a career: the case of euthanasia doctor Dr. Heyde. Frankfurt am Main 1971.
• Ernst Klee : "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The destruction of life unworthy of life. 11th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24326-2 .
• Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews . 12th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
• Alexander Mitscherlich, Fred Mielke: Medicine without humanity. Documents of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial . 16th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-22003-3 .
• Johannes Tuchel : Concentration Camp. Organizational history and function of the “Inspection of the Concentration Camps” 1934–1938 . (= Series of publications of the Federal Archives, Volume 39) Boldt, Boppard am Rhein 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1902-3 .
• Julian Clement, Björn Rohwer: The scandal surrounding the 'euthanasia' doctor Werner Heyde in the East and West German media . In: Sönke Zankel (Ed.): Scandals in Schleswig-Holstein. Contributions to the history competition of the Federal President . Schmidt & Klaunig, Kiel 2012, ISBN 978-3-88312-419-3 , pp. 129–166.
• Thomas Vormbaum (Ed.): "Euthanasia" in court. The indictment of the public prosecutor at the Higher Regional Court Frankfurt / M. against Dr. Werner Heyde u. a. dated May 22, 1962 . Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-8305-1047-0 .
• Handful of ashes . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1964, pp. 28 ff . ( online - cover story about Heydes suicide).

Films, film contributions

• 1963 (GDR): The Heyde-Sawade Affair (film in the TV epitaval series). Book: Walter Jupé , Friedrich Karl Kaul ; Director: Wolfgang Luderer . German television broadcasting, GDR. Foundation of the German Broadcasting Archive Babelsberg. Archive number of IDNR 035813
• 1964: Lutz Lehmann: Article 1: On Werner Heyde's suicide; Article 2: Eugen Kogon on the Heyde trial . Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR, Panorama, February 17, 1964), Hamburg.
• 2002: Gerolf Karwath: Hitler's elites after 1945 Part 1: Doctors - Medicine without a conscience. Director: Holger Hillesheim. Südwestrundfunk (SWR, 2002).

Web links

• Literature by and about Werner Heyde in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography: Werner Heyde. (No longer available online.) In: olokaustos.org. March 22, 2007, archived from the original on April 16, 2013 (Italian). 

See also

• List of Nazi doctors and those involved in Nazi medical crimes

Individual evidence

1. ^ Heydes' curriculum vitae on the occasion of his appointment as full professor. In: Würzburger Generalanzeiger , February 1, 1940.
2. ↑ See the entry of Werner Heyde's matriculation in the Rostock matriculation portal
3. ↑ Werner E. Gerabek: Heyde, Werner. 2005, p. 592.
4. ^ Heydes' letter to Heinrich Himmler dated April 22, 1933, in documents from the Berlin Document Center zu Eicke, quoted in: Tuchel: Concentration Camp , p. 136.
5. ^ Heydes curriculum vitae from January 1, 1939, cited in Vormbaum: Anklageschrift , p. 3. For Heyde's work in the concentration camps before 1939, see Tuchel: Concentration Camp , p. 289 ff.
6. ^ Jobst Böning: From Reichardt to Beckmann: Würzburger Psychiatrie in the 20th Century. In: Tempora mutantur et nos? Festschrift for Walter M. Brod on his 95th birthday. With contributions from friends, companions and contemporaries. Edited by Andreas Mettenleiter , Akamedon, Pfaffenhofen 2007, pp. 413–419; here: p. 413.
7. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945 (=  Würzburg Medical History Research , Supplement 3). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1995, ISBN 3-88479-932-0 (also: Dissertation Würzburg 1995), p. 42.
8. ↑ Hennermann: Heyde , p. 56.
9. ^ Martin Krupinski : Werner Heyde: Psychiatrists and mass murderers. A forensic-psychiatric perspective. In: Der Nervenarzt, 5/2019, pp. 528-533.
10. ↑ ^{a b} Anonymized representation by Burkhard Jellonnek: Homosexuals under the swastika. The persecution of homosexuals in the Third Reich. Schöningh, Paderborn 1990, ISBN 3-506-77482-4 , p. 268f. The name Heydes is named, referring to Jellonnek in terms of content: Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller : Mann für Mann. Biographical lexicon on the history of love for friends and male-male sexuality in the German-speaking area. MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-928983-65-2 , p. 352 f. Hefelmann's statements in Thomas Vormbaum, p. 362.
11. ↑ The following presentation largely follows the indictment of May 22, 1962, cf. Vormbaum: Indictment . It should be noted that this is a subsequent reconstruction based on incomplete documents - much was destroyed in 1945 or never recorded in writing - and testimony from witnesses. The truthfulness of the statements must always be viewed against the background of the threat of criminal prosecution.
12. ↑ As early as 1939, the term “special treatment” was used by the Gestapo to describe “execution”. 14 f 13 is the file number used by the “Inspector of the Concentration Camps at the Reichsführer SS ”, cf. Vormbaum: indictment , S. 317f.
13. ↑ For Justice meeting see Ernst Klee: What did they do , p 248ff and Vormbaum: indictment , pp 310-316. Here also on p. 313: Notes by a conference participant on Heyde's speech.
14. ↑ Quoted in Jellonnek: Homosexuelle , p. 269.
15. ↑ Werner Heyde: Report on the SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Clausen from March 30th until 5.4. trip undertaken through Denmark. Facsimile: report on the SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Clausen from March 30th until 5.4. trip undertaken through Denmark. (No longer available online.) Simon Wiesenthal Center , formerly in the original ; accessed on September 27, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) For Heyde's connections to Clausen, see also: Memorandum from the American military government of September 26, 1945. Excerpts from Klee: What they did , p. 19. 
    
16. ↑ Ute Felbor: Racial Biology and Hereditary Science in the Medical Faculty of the University of Würzburg 1937–1945. Würzburg 1995, p. 87.
17. ↑ Referring to investigations by the Nuremberg-Fürth public prosecutor's office (11 Js 24/70) at the beginning of the 1970s: Edith Raim: Heribert Ostendorf / Uwe Danker (eds.): The Nazi criminal justice system and its aftermath. In: sehepunkte 4, No. 6. June 15, 2004, accessed on October 15, 2019 (review). 
18. ↑ Jörg Skriebeleit: Also in Würzburg ?! - On the history of an unnoticed satellite camp of the Flossenbürg concentration camp. In: Mainfränkisches Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Kunst. 56, 2004, ISSN  0076-2725 , pp. 293-316, here p. 302.
19. ^ Jobst Böning, p. 413
20. ^ Evidence in the medical process was, among other things, the correspondence between Heyde and the T4 expert Hermann Pfannmüller. On the basis of the documents it could be proven that Pfannmüller, in addition to his work as the institution director, prepared over 2000 reports in three weeks. Overview of the correspondence. Nuremberg Trials Project. Retrieved September 27, 2019 (partly in English).
21. ↑ For the following see Klee: What they did , p. 19ff. and Godau-Schüttke: Affair , passim.
22. ↑ Bernd Philippsen: Nazi euthanasia criminal in Flensburg: Werner Heyde: The doctor without a conscience. In: Flensburger Tageblatt . September 1, 2015, accessed September 27, 2019 . Nazi crimes: euthanasia: handfuls of ashes. In: Der Spiegel 8/1964. February 17, 1964, pp. 28-38, here p. 37 , accessed on September 27, 2019 . 
     
23. ↑ Erich Maletzke: SS doctor in hiding: A dispute over nighttime drinking unmasked Dr. Death. In: shz.de . December 15, 2013, accessed September 27, 2019 . 
24. ^ Jobst Böning, p. 413.
25. ↑ Bert Honolka: The Kreuzelschreiber. Doctors without a conscience. Euthanasia in the Third Reich . Rütten & Loenig-Verlag, Hamburg 1961, p. 111.
26. ↑ Godau-Schüttke: Affair , pp. 132-149.
27. ^ See Heyde confidante. The shadows are disappearing. In: Der Spiegel. Volume 16, 1962, issue 6, p. 30 f.
28. ^ Vormbaum: Indictment , p. XXIII.
29. ↑ Heydes' farewell letter quoted in excerpts in Godau-Schüttke: Affäre , p. 235ff. The quote was used by Heyde's relatives in the obituary notice. For this: Klee: What they did , p. 50.
30. ↑ Mitscherlich: Medicine , p. 17.
31. ↑ For the war youth generation see Ulrich Herbert: Best. Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903–1989. Dietz, Bonn 1996. ISBN 3-8012-5019-9 , pp. 42-45.
32. ↑ On the change in function see Karin Orth: The system of the National Socialist concentration camps. A political organization story. Hamburger Edition, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-930908-52-2 , p. 33f.
33. ↑ Decision of the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court, 2nd Criminal Senate of January 4, 1963 (2 Ws 454/63 (Js 17/59 Gen. StA)). With the decision, the complaint against Heyde's continued pre-trial detention was rejected as unfounded.
34. ↑ Viktor Brack's interrogation on March 31, 1947. In: Klaus Dörner (Ed.): The Nürnberger Ärzteprocess 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-32152-X , p. 8/01171.
35. ^ Statement by Hans Glatzel dated December 10, 1959, quoted in Godau-Schüttke: Affäre , p. 66.
36. ^ Statement by Hartwig Delfs to the Kiel investigative committee of November 2, 1960, quoted in Godau-Schüttke: Affäre , p. 72.
37. ↑ Georg Bittner: The Heyde case or the misunderstood collegiality. In: Medical communications. Volume 46, 1961, pp. 1711-1717.
38. ↑ For example: The Kreuzelschreiber . In: Der Spiegel . No. 19 , 1961, pp. 35 ff . ( online ). Handful of ashes . In: Der Spiegel . No.
     8 , 1964, pp. 28 ff . ( online ).
39. ↑ Quoted from Godau-Schüttke: Affäre , p. 236. Italics in the original.
40. ↑ quoted from Godau-Schüttke: Affäre , p. 225.
41. ^ Erich Maletzke, Klaus Volquartz: The Schleswig-Holstein Landtag ; 1983, page 94
42. ↑ Suffered and parted . In: Der Spiegel . No. 3 , 1961 ( online ).
43. ↑ Tobias Freimüller: Physicians: Operation Volkskörper . In: Norbert Frei : Hitler's Elites after 1945 . Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-34045-8 , pp. 50–55.
44. ^ Gerhard Richter: Aunt Marianne. Oil on canvas. In: gerhard-richter.com. 1965, Retrieved September 27, 2019 . 
45. ^ Gerhard Richter: Herr Heyde: Werner Heyde in November 1959, when he turned himself in to the authorities. Oil on canvas. In: gerhard-richter.com. 1965, Retrieved September 27, 2019 . 
46. ^ Auction: Gerhard Richter's key work is auctioned. (No longer available online.) In: Zeit Online . October 27, 2006, archived from the original on March 7, 2014 ; accessed on September 27, 2019 . Gerhard Richter's key political picture will be auctioned. (No longer available online.) In: Kobinet - Cooperation with disabled people on the Internet. October 28, 2006, archived from the original on September 27, 2007 ; accessed on September 27, 2019 . 
     

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on January 7, 2007 in this version .