Werner Villinger

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Werner Villinger (born October 9, 1887 in Besigheim am Neckar, † August 8, 1961 near Innsbruck ) was a German child and youth psychiatrist . From 1945 until his death he denied having been a T4 appraiser .

Live and act

Villinger, the son of a pharmacy owner, attended the royal high school in Ludwigsburg . After graduating from high school , he moved to London to learn the English language. Villinger wanted to embark on a career as a naval officer, but was turned down because of physical unfit. From 1909 to 1914 Villinger studied medicine in Munich , Kiel and Strasbourg . From 1913 he worked alongside his studies as an assistant at the Anatomical Institute of the University of Strasbourg . After the outbreak of the First World War , Villinger was drafted into the German Army in August 1914 and received an emergency license in December 1914 . At the end of December 1918 he was discharged from the army and Villinger was able to continue his medical career. The doctor worked at various university clinics in Marburg , Munich and finally in Tübingen , where he also received his doctorate in 1920 and from July 1920 headed the newly established child psychiatric department ( clinical youth home ). In the same year he married Louise Bösch. The couple had six children.

In 1926 Werner Villinger was appointed to the state youth welfare office and youth welfare office in Hamburg . At the same time he worked as a consultant senior physician at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Hamburg . In addition, from the summer semester of 1927 he held lectures on psychopathology of children and adolescents at the university and taught at the Institute for Social Education and at the Institute for Teacher Education. On January 1, 1932, he was appointed professor at the University of Hamburg.

Villinger was a member of the Stahlhelm , but resigned before this organization was transferred to the SA .

On January 1, 1934, Villinger took over the position of chief physician at the Bodelschwinghschen Anstalten in Bethel near Bielefeld . From then on he adopted the ideology prescribed at the time and advocated a new anthropology . For example, at the 1st International Congress for Curative Education in Geneva, July 24-26, 1939, he said in relation to adolescent psychopaths:

“It will be a matter for further research to determine whether and, if so, which other connections between character and physique, i. H. certain characters and certain body types can be found, whether the Kretschmer type designations can be somehow associated with racial nuclei, whether finally genetic character studies, psychopathology and all racial research do not lead to a new anthropology that riddles not only the racial souls and the hereditary character, but also to clarify and prevent the occurrence of so many inherited malfunctions better than before. "

Villinger was an advocate of a sterilization law. In this regard, he noted in a lecture given at the Welfare Education Day in 1934:

“Anyone who repeatedly had to experience in everyday work that idiotic and drinker families were particularly likely to have welfare pupils and those who continued to see many children of former welfare pupils needing welfare education again could not do anything differently with regard to welfare education than they had for years for the coming into force of a sterilization law ... to use zealously and emphatically. "

Depending on the type of institution, he thought that 30–50% of the pupils should be sterilized. As a senior physician at the Bodelschwingh Institute , he was involved in sterilization measures. As a representative of Bethel, he was a member of the Standing Committee on Issues of Racial Hygiene and Care . You can read about Villinger, who joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937 , and the time of National Socialism :

“It is no longer possible to determine how many patients were sterilized in Bethel under Villinger's direction. In 1937 he said at a committee meeting: 'With 750 sterilizations carried out, we have not observed any adverse physical or psychological consequences. We have experience of several hundred cases (male only) with FE-educators and have never seen serious consequences'… Werner Villinger became an assessor at the Hereditary Health Court at the Hamm Higher Regional Court in March 1937… He became a member of the NSV and NSD -Ärztebund . "

From 1937 Villinger worked as a judge at the Hereditary Health Supreme Court (EGOG) Hamm and from 1940 at EGOG Breslau . Villinger's involvement in the T4 euthanasia campaign is little researched or known . However, there are two lists of experts in which he is listed as a T4 expert starting on March 28, 1941 . The physician himself "denied participating in the action all his life".

From February 1, 1940, Villinger became full professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Breslau . Villinger was also from July 25, 1940 in military district VIII (Breslau) as a consulting psychiatrist, most recently with the rank of senior physician . He was also editor of the “Zeitschrift für Kinderforschung”.

At the beginning of 1945 Villinger returned to Tübingen via Dresden. There he was entrusted with the provisional management of the university mental hospital on February 23. About a year later he moved to Marburg, where on July 25, 1946, he was appointed full professor and director of the university mental hospital there. After his denazification process , he held “from 1949 to 1950 the office of Dean of the Medical Faculty and in the winter semester 1950/51 as well as from 1955 to 1956 the position of Rector of the Philipps University . From 1951 to 1953 Villinger was President of the Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists ”.

Villinger's retirement took place on April 1, 1956. Until January 1959, however, he was still in charge of the chair administration and management of the clinic.

Already in the first post-war years he tried to “overcome the ties to foreign child psychiatrists that had been broken by the war. He agreed with the French child psychiatrist Georges Heuyer (1949) to close this gap as soon as possible ... The child psychiatric chapter in the 'Textbook of Nervous and Mental Diseases' by Hans Walter Gruhle and written by Villinger in the post-war period (1952) Wilhelm Weygandt was one of the few child and adolescent psychiatric monographs of the post-war period ”.

Villinger supported the Federal Association of Life Aid for Mentally Handicapped Children, founded in Marburg in 1958, and was chairman of its scientific advisory board. From 1958 he was chairman of the German Society for Sexual Research . The physician became an expert on the reparations committee of the German Bundestag in 1961 . He coined the term "compensation neurosis", which contributed to the fact that the approximately 400,000 victims of forced sterilization during the Nazi dictatorship fell out of the Federal Compensation Act. Further experts in the reparation committee were Hans Nachtsheim and Villinger's long-time employee Helmut E. Ehrhardt , who, like Villinger, did not see the forced sterilizations as a Nazi injustice.

On May 3, 1961, Der Spiegel accused him of having been a T4 expert .

On July 26, 1961, Villinger was questioned again about his T4 employees by the Marburg District Court . Thirteen days later he had a fatal accident on a mountain tour near Innsbruck, where he was attending a congress. “Back then, 'the word of suicide' was going around behind closed doors in Marburg.” Amazingly, his death was ignored by the editors of the renowned specialist journal Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie , not even a hint appeared in the messages section .

Honors

Works (selection)

  • The children's department of the Tübingen University Neurological Clinic. In: Journal for Child Research. 1923 / year 28, pp. 128-160.
  • The mental needs of urban youth. In: Zeitwende. 1928, pp. 1-11.
  • Characterological assessment of difficult adolescents, particularly adolescent psychopaths. In: Secretariat of the International Society for Curative Education (Ed.): Report on the I. International Congress for Curative Education. Zurich 1939, pp. 239-258.
  • Upbringing and educability. In: Journal for Child Research. 1953 / year 49, pp. 17-27.
  • Child Guidance Clinics. In: Our youth. 1949 / year 1, pp. 18-23.
  • Modern problems in adolescent psychiatry. In: The neurologist. 1952 / year 23, pp. 201-209.
  • The Juvenile Court Act from a youth psychiatric perspective. In: Practice for child psychology and child psychiatry. 1955 / year 4, pp. 1-4.

literature

  • Martin Holtkamp: Werner Villinger (1887-1961). The continuity of the concept of inferiority in adolescent and social psychiatry. Matthiesen Verlag, Husum 2002, ISBN 3-7868-4097-0 . (Treatises on the History of Medicine and Natural Sciences 97)
  • Ernst Klee : The Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich: Who Was What Before and After 1945? S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 . (Updated edition, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , Fischer Tb. 16048)
  • Ernst Klee: "Euthanasia" in the Nazi state. The "destruction of life unworthy of life". S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-10-039303-1 .
  • Ernst Klee: What they did - what they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1986, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 . (Fischer Tb .; 4364)
  • Hans-Walter Schmuhl: Between hasty obedience and half-hearted refusal. Werner Villinger and the National Socialist medical crimes. In: The neurologist. 2002 / No. 73, pp. 1058-1063.
  • J. Wilkes: How did young people experience their forced sterilization during the time of National Socialism. From the report of a responsible doctor. In: The neurologist. 2002 / No. 73, pp. 1055-1057.
  • Rolf Castell, Jan Nedoschill, Madeleine Rupps and Dagmar Bussiek: History of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-525-46174-7 , pp. 463-480.
  • Gerhardt Nissen: Cultural history of mental disorders in children and adolescents. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-608-94104-5 , pp. 467-472.
  • Landesverband Hessen (Hrsg.): Learning from history - home education in the 50s and 60s, the home cape and home reform. Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-925146-65-2 .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Klee: What they did - What they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews. Frankfurt am Main 2004, pp. 170f.
  2. ↑ Werner Villinger: Characterological assessment of difficult adolescents, especially adolescent psychopaths. P. 257.
  3. ↑ Quoted from J. Wilkes: How did young people experience their forced sterilization in the time of National Socialism. P. 1055.
  4. ↑ Cf. Rolf Castell et al .: History of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. P. 465.
  5. ↑ Rolf Castell et al .: History of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. P. 467.
  6. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 641.
  7. ↑ Rolf Castell et al .: History of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. P. 469.
  8. ↑ Albrecht Scholz, Thomas Barth, Anna-Sophia Pappai and Axel Wacker: The fate of the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty in Breslau after the expulsion in 1945/46. In: Würzburger medical history reports 24, 2005, pp. 497-533, here: p. 529
  9. ↑ Albrecht Scholz, Thomas Barth, Anna-Sophia Pappai and Axel Wacker: The fate of the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty in Breslau after the expulsion in 1945/46. In: Würzburger medical history reports 24, 2005, pp. 497-533, here: pp. 529 f.
  10. ↑ Albrecht Scholz, Thomas Barth, Anna-Sophia Pappai and Axel Wacker: The fate of the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty in Breslau after the expulsion in 1945/46. In: Würzburger medical history reports 24, 2005, p. 497-533, here: p. 514 u. 530
  11. ^ Rolf Castell et al .: History of child and adolescent psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. P. 475.
  12. ↑ Albrecht Scholz, Thomas Barth, Anna-Sophia Pappai and Axel Wacker: The fate of the teaching staff of the Medical Faculty in Breslau after the expulsion in 1945/46. In: Würzburger medical history reports 24, 2005, pp. 497-533, here: p. 530
  13. ↑ Rolf Castell et al .: History of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. P. 474–476.
  14. ^ Gerhardt Nissen: Cultural history of mental disorders in children and adolescents. P. 467 f.
  15. ↑ Katharina Gröning, Development Lines of Pedagogical Consulting Work 2010, VS-Verlag, p. 119.
  16. ↑ spiegel.de January 2, 2012: Wave of Truths
  17. ↑ See Landesverband Hessen 2006, p. 64.
  18. ^ Thomas Gerst: Law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring. Outlaw after 74 years . In: Deutsches Ärzteblatt . 104th volume, issue 1–2, January 8, 2007, issue A, p. 14.
  19. ↑ The Kreuzelschreiber . Issue 19, pp. 35-44
  20. ↑ Rolf Castell et al .: History of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Germany from 1937 to 1961. P. 477.
  21. ^ Wolfram Schäfer: Contributions to the history of Marburg child and adolescent psychiatry
  22. ↑ Reading sample
personal data
SURNAME Villinger, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German child and youth psychiatrist
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Besigheim am Neckar
DATE OF DEATH August 8, 1961
Place of death near Innsbruck