Wilhelm Gutermuth (physician)

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Wilhelm "Willi" Gutermuth (born March 31, 1905 in Frankfurt am Main ; † May 5, 1982 ) was a German internist .

Life

Youth and education

Gutermuth was the son of the businessman Johann Gutermuth and his wife Katharina, née Jüngert. From 1911 to 1917 he attended elementary school. After passing the entrance examination into the lower secondary school of Adlerflycht Realschule in autumn 1917, he moved to this institution. In 1920 Gutermuth took the one-year volunteer exam, which meant that he switched to the upper secondary school of the Klinger secondary school at Easter of the same year. In the autumn of 1923, due to economic difficulties, he had to leave the senior class of his school in order to switch to a grain wholesale company as an apprentice.

In the summer semester of 1924 Gutermuth moved as a stu. rer. pole. the University of Frankfurt with a small matriculation. At the same time he prepared the final examination, which he passed at Easter 1928 before the examination board of the provincial school college in Kassel. In the autumn of 1928 Gutermuth began studying medicine, which he completed after eleven semesters in the spring of 1934 with the medical state examination in Frankfurt.

Career as a doctor in the Nazi state

From 1934 Gutermuth worked as a medical intern for ten months at the Institute for Vegetative Physiology at the University of Frankfurt before he joined the Medical University Clinic in April 1935. In November 1939, Wilhelm Nonnenbruch gave him a position as senior physician and deputy director of the University Clinic in Frankfurt am Main.

1940 doctorate Gutermuth - the beginning in 1933 of the Nazi Party and the SS belonged (SS No. 223,840.) - under the supervision of his SS colleague Hans Jost with an experimental thesis on biochemical processes in the combustion of sugar into body cells at the University of Frankfurt am Main to Dr. med . The result of his work was the finding “that the phosphoric acid esters v. a. triosphoric acid can be oxidized in the cell at a rate similar to lactic acid. The oxidation of the primary glycose products, however, excludes the formation of lactic acid as an intermediate product of the sugar oxidation in the cell. "

In 1942 Gutermuth was commissioned by the General Commissioner for Sanitary and Health Care Karl Brandt as “authorized representative for special medical tasks in the armaments industry” to have the sick leave in all war-important companies - in particular the armaments industry - checked by special commands from control doctors from the medical examiner service and to reduce it systematically in order to counteract the worsening shortage of personnel in the German war economy at that time. The pre-loaded patients were checked in piecework in series examinations which were each estimated at around nine minutes. Characteristic of this Gutermuth action was a rigorous enrollment practice, which was guided by the view that “with regard to the victims at the front” it was “to be accepted that one or the other national comrade may suffer or damage health through work at home his manpower exhausted earlier. ”So long-term damage to health was accepted in favor of a quick reintegration into the work process. By May 1943 Gutermuth's medical officers were able to recruit around 200,000 workers for war-important work in this way. In 1944, the campaign was discontinued due to the subpoena practice, which could only be rationally organized to a limited extent as a result of the bombing war and the associated impediment to the delivery of mail, and due to the increasing tendency of general practitioners to refuse to work with control doctors - which had its background in the exorbitant remuneration of control doctors. Winfried Süss considers the Gutermuth campaign, with a view to the history of medicine and the war economy under National Socialism, to be remarkable for three reasons: On the one hand, the campaign, with its "hitherto unrivaled ruthlessness in the practice of enrollment, has rapidly declined the importance of the rationality criterion health compared to the of labor input ”made clear. Second, she referred to "the increasingly narrow scope of action of a regime that had long since exhausted the resources available to it". And finally, the action marked "a further escation level in the health policy conflict of competencies between Conti, Brandt and Ley".

In the autumn of 1943 Gutermuth also became chief physician of the special hospital facilities of Aktion Brandt in Köppern . He was described by colleagues as "rigorous and violent" for this time.

post war period

Even before the end of the war, Gutermuth and his family left for Rodheim vor der Höhe and took over a country doctor's practice there. The mayor of Frankfurt, Wilhelm Hollbach , who was appointed by the US Army at the end of March 1945, released Gutermuth from his functions on April 6, 1945, and from April 13, 1945, Gutermuth was arrested on suspicion of "killing the sick". Gutermuth was arrested and taken to the Darmstadt internment camp in July 1945 by the Counter Intelligence Corps , where he was held until 1948. In the following years he was questioned as part of the Nuremberg Trials .

The investigation against Gutermuth himself remained inconclusive. He was denazified as a fellow traveler in 1947 .

Fonts

  • About the interaction of glycolysis and oxidation during sugar combustion in the cell , Frankfurt am Main 1940. (Dissertation)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ute Daub: "Special hospital facility Aktion Brandt in Köppern im Taunus" - The last phase of "euthanasia" in Frankfurt am Main , 1992, p. 48
  2. ↑ a b Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 211.
  3. ↑ Jens Marti Rohrbach: Ophthalmology in National Socialism , 2007, p. 164.
  4. ↑ a b Winfried Süß: The “People's Body” in War: Health Policy, Health Conditions and Sick Murder in National Socialist Germany 1939-1945 , Munich 2003, p. 251
  5. ↑ Ute Daub: "Special hospital facility Aktion Brandt in Köppern im Taunus" - The last phase of "euthanasia" in Frankfurt am Main , 1992, p. 52
  6. ↑ Ute Daub: "Special hospital facility Aktion Brandt in Köppern im Taunus" - The last phase of "euthanasia" in Frankfurt am Main , 1992, p. 54
  7. ↑ Ute Daub: "Special hospital facility Aktion Brandt in Köppern im Taunus" - The last phase of "euthanasia" in Frankfurt am Main , 1992, p. 55
personal data
SURNAME Gutermuth, Wilhelm
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gutermuth, Willi (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German internist
DATE OF BIRTH March 31, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH May 5th 1982