Wilhelm Beiglböck

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Wilhelm Beiglböck as a defendant in the Nuremberg medical trial

Wilhelm Franz Josef Beiglböck (born October 10, 1905 in Hochneukirchen , † November 22, 1963 in Buxtehude ) was an Austrian internist . As the person responsible for the implementation of seawater experiments in the Dachau concentration camp in the Nazi era , he was in the physician process condemned.

Life

Beiglböck attended the Stiftsgymnasium Melk and studied medicine at the University of Vienna . There he became active during his studies in 1923 with the Vienna academic fraternity of Moldavia . After his license to practice medicine in 1931 and his doctorate in Vienna in 1932, he worked from 1933 as an assistant at the III. Medical University Clinic in Vienna with Franz Chvostek and then in the I. Medical University Clinic with Hans Eppinger junior .

Since 1933 he was a member of the NSDAP and since 1934 of the SA , most recently with the rank of Obersturmbannführer . In 1939 he completed his habilitation and in 1940 he became senior physician under Hans Eppinger . From May 1941, Beiglböck worked as a medical officer in the Air Force . In 1944 he became an adjunct professor at the University of Vienna.

Human experiments on concentration camp inmates

In May 1944, questions about the drinkability of seawater were discussed in the Reich Aviation Ministry . The background was the survival of German pilots floating in the sea. There were two methods to choose from: the method of the Viennese air force engineer Eduard Berka, which masked the salty taste and was supposed to improve the alleged excretion of salt through vitamins, and the method of the physician Konrad Schäfer , which chemically reduced the salt content. To make the decision, human experiments were planned; As damage to health and possibly death was to be expected, concentration camp prisoners were chosen. These were exclusively Roma and Sinti . The test planning was done by Hermann Becker-Freyseng , the implementation by Beiglböck.

The concentration camp prisoners who had to undergo the experiments include the German Sinti Jakob Bamberger , Karl Höllenreiner , Josef Laubinger and Ernst Mettbach .

Law enforcement and vocational rehabilitation

Nuremberg medical trial: Wilhelm Beiglböck admits "not guilty"

At the beginning of 1947, the Vienna public prosecutor initiated proceedings against Beiglböck for war crimes, mistreatment and torture as well as violation of human dignity. In November 1946, at the request of the American occupation forces, he was transferred to Nuremberg, where he had to answer in the Nuremberg medical trial in 1946/47 because of the experiments carried out in the Dachau concentration camp. The Viennese proceedings were discontinued in October 1947.

He was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment at the Nuremberg doctors ' trial. His defense attorney was Gustav Steinbauer . Steinbauer had a full list of the subjects. He refused to provide them to the court available, partly because he did not take on tasks of the prosecution, on the other hand, since it is "primitive, simple people and that many of them are family members who by the authorities as asocial out become."

After the sentence had been reduced to 10 years, Beiglböck was released from Landsberg prison on December 15, 1951 . Previously, on January 31, 1951 , the American High Commissioner John J. McCloy had made a final decision on the appeals for clemency from 89 German war criminals.

The German Society for Internal Medicine had campaigned massively for Beiglböck's rehabilitation. An expert commission set up by her, to which Curt Oehme , Ludwig Heilmeyer and Rudolf Schoen belonged, had come to the conclusion that "mistakes had been made in the way of selecting and recruiting test subjects and in choosing a concentration camp as the test site, that these mistakes were not crimes. "

After his release from prison in 1951, Beiglböck first worked for Heilmeyer in Freiburg. On his mediation, he became the chief physician of the internal department of the hospital in Buxtehude in 1952 .

On January 12, 1960, an investigation by the Bückeburg public prosecutor's office for murder against Beiglböck was set. The correspondence of the investigations (1959–1962) of the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations against Beiglböck has been preserved under the file number AR 569/59 .

In 1962 the invitation of the Austrian Medical Association to Beiglböck to give a medical lecture in Vienna caused a stir in the media. The Vienna Jewish Community protested, Beiglböck was unloaded. The administrative committee of the city of Buxtehude, which was responsible for hiring Beiglböck, supported him and declared him innocent of the crimes he was accused of.

He tried all his life to justify himself for the acts committed in Dachau. He died in Buxtehude in 1963 under unexplained circumstances.

Fonts

  • W. Beiglböck / H. Hoff / R. Clotten: On the question of the effect of cortisol - the corticogenic chain reaction. Augsburg, self-published in 1950. ( One copy is in the holdings of the Augsburg City Library. )
  • From 1932 to 1964 ( date of publication ) Beiglböck published over 100 original papers in German-language medical journals.

literature

  • Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Volume 7: Supplement A – K. Winter, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 978-3-8253-6050-4 , pp. 64-65.
  • Alexander Mitscherlich / Fred Mielke: Medicine without humanity - documents of the Nuremberg medical process. Lamberg and Schneider, Heidelberg 1949, ISBN 3-596-22003-3 .
  • Alexander Mitscherlich / Fred Mielke: Science without humanity - Medical and eugenic aberrations under dictatorship, bureaucracy and war . Lamberg and Schneider, Heidelberg 1949.
  • Ernst Klee : The Personal Lexicon for the Third Reich - Who Was What Before and After 1945 . Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 2003, ISBN 3-10-039309-0 .
  • François Bayle: Croix gammée contre caducée. Les expériences humaines en Allemagne pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale . Neustadt 1950.
  • Ralf Forsbach / Hans-Georg Hofer: Internists in dictatorship and young democracy. The German Society for Internal Medicine 1933–1970, Berlin 2018, pp. 160–169.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wilhelm Beiglböck on encyclopedie.bseditions.fr
  2. ↑ Tanja Malle and Lukas Wieselberg, Verdicts of Guilt and Ethics Milestone , March 1, 2017 on science.orf.at ; see also: Beiglböck's own information: http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/archiv/zs/zs-0824.pdf (p. 8)
  3. ↑ Ludwig Eiber, Robert Sigel: Dachau Trials: Nazi Crimes before American Military Courts in Dachau 1945-1948. Procedure, results, aftermath. Wallstein Verlag, 2007, p. 148 f.
  4. ↑ Michail Krausnick: The gypsies are here. Roma and Sinti between yesterday and today. Würzburg 1981, p. 156.
  5. ^ The Nuremberg Doctors Trial 1946/47. Index tape for the microfiche edition. Walter de Gruyter, 2000, p. 105.
  6. ↑ a b The Nuremberg Doctors Trial 1946/47. Index tape for the microfiche edition. Walter de Gruyter, 2000, p. 116.
  7. ↑ DÖW - Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance. In: de.doew.braintrust.at. Retrieved January 2, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Mitscherlich / Mielke 1949, p. 76.
  9. ^ Thomas Alan Schwartz: The pardon of German war criminals: John J. McCloy and the prisoners of Landsberg. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Volume 38, Issue 3, July 1990, pp. 375-414 (especially pp. 375, 407).
  10. ↑ Mitscherlich / Mielke 1949, p. 81, first names added
  11. ↑ a b The Nuremberg Doctors Trial 1946/47. Index tape for the microfiche edition. Walter de Gruyter, 2000. p. 299.
  12. ↑ Federal Archives (Melanie Wehr, Andreas Kunz, Tobias Herrmann and Peter Gohle): Central Office of the State Justice Administrations, B 162, (partial search book). Ludwigsburg 2012. p. 208
  13. ↑ Volker Klimpel : Doctors Death. Unnatural and violent death in nine chapters and a biographical appendix. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-2769-8 , p. 61.
personal data
SURNAME Beiglböck, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Beiglböck, Wilhelm Franz Josef (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian internist, Nazi war criminal
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Hochneukirchen
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1963
Place of death Buxtehude