Willi Baumert

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Willi Baumert (born May 26, 1909 in Osnabrück , † February 10, 1984 ) was a German psychiatrist who was involved in euthanasia crimes during the Nazi era .

Life

Baumert completed a medical degree after completing his school days . Baumert joined the NSDAP during his studies at the beginning of February 1932 ( membership number 930.392) and when the National Socialists came to power in 1933, he joined the SS (SS number 86.126). He completed his medical studies with the state examination and was in 1935 at the University of Göttingen after defending his dissertation deposits and precipitations in the area of epithelial bays in the neck area of the bladder to Dr. med. PhD . Then worked at the Pathological Institute of the University of Göttingen. Baumert entered the provincial service of the province of Hanover in 1936 and worked at the state sanatorium and nursing home (LHP) Osnabrück from 1936 to 1940.

During World War II he was in 1940 as a doctor in the Waffen-SS in Wunstorf used and in this context for a week half the country's mental hospital Lüneburg seconded, where he from 1943 under the clinic director Max Bräuner head of the euphemistically Children's Ward mentioned Place was. In this role, Baumert arranged for the killing of mentally ill children. Over 300 children were victims of child euthanasia in Lüneburg between October 1941 and April 1945 as a result of the fatal doses of luminal and morphine .

In September 1944 Baumert was drafted back into the Waffen SS, where he last held the rank of Obersturmbannführer.

After the war he was in Allied internment . After his release he worked as an unskilled worker and in 1947 was recognized as a specialist in nervous and mental diseases. Before the main denazification committee of the city of Göttingen, he was only classified as a supporter in 1948 and euthanasia played no role. From 1948 he was the company doctor of the physical workshops in Göttingen . From the beginning of November 1951 he was employed as an assistant doctor in the State Sanatorium and Nursing Institute Wunstorf, where he rose to the position of first senior physician and medical adviser at the beginning of October 1953 . On the occasion of his civil service in 1951, the director of the Lüneburg sanatorium wrote that it was permanently incomprehensible to him that a doctor with such a heavy medical and ethical burden of conscience could work again and even as a civil servant. From June 1958 until his early retirement in 1964 he was director of the state hospital in Königslutter . He was also chairman of the Association of Lower Saxony Neurologists and Psychiatrists.

Public prosecutor's investigations in 1948/49 in the run-up to the “Gässner Trial” carried out in 1950, the subject of which was the transfer of psychiatric patients to Nazi killing centers in Lower Saxony, did not reveal any incriminating findings on Baumert. Baumert was questioned again in 1962 on charges of willful killing and admitted his responsibility for killing mentally ill children. In March 1962, proceedings against Baumert were initiated before the Lüneburg Regional Court . Baumert initially denied everything, but there were witnesses, so that the public prosecutor's office had sufficient suspicion of collective murder in at least 51 cases. Baumert, who suffered a heart attack, was certified in August that he was unable to be questioned. Nevertheless, he continued to work part-time as a clinic director. Because of a "threatening heart disease" Baumert was retired early in 1964 and in March 1966 Baumert was put out of prosecution by the Higher Regional Court of Celle for health reasons.

Baumert was referred to as "Herod of Lüneburg". He died on February 10, 1984.

In May 2018, a study by Christof Beyer on personal continuities of psychiatrists in Lower Saxony from the time of National Socialism was presented, which was carried out on behalf of the Ministry of Social Affairs and which also dealt in detail with the Baumert case and the Ernst Meumann case (director of the Heil- and nursing home Königslutter), who sent 420 patients to the sanatorium in Bernburg (Saale), where they were gassed with carbon monoxide and who was back in government service after the war. The late, if ever, criminal prosecution also played a role in the fact that the doctors involved covered one another and that former Nazi functionaries were again employed in the ministries. In Lower Saxony, this included Otto Bauer, who was responsible for so-called health policy in the Krakow ghetto during the Nazi era .

literature

  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Raimond Reiter: Empirical analysis and methods in research into the “Third Reich”: case studies on content analysis, type formation, statistics, on interviews and personal reports . Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-631-36367-2 (short biography Baumert, p. 179f)
  • Christof Beyer: Personal continuities in the psychiatry of Lower Saxony after 1945 , study commissioned by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Social Affairs, 2018

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dr. Willi Baumert  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.pk.lueneburg.de  
  2. ↑ Willi Baumert on http://www.dws-xip.pl
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Nazi euthanasia using the example of the children's department of the State Medical and Care Institution Lüneburg on denktag-archiv.de
  4. ↑ Step21 (ed.): The Unprinted. Nazi doctors murdered children in Lüneburg - everyone knew it, but the public voice was silent  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: [Weisse Flecken], January 2006 edition, p. 10.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.stiftung-evz.de  
  5. ↑ Train of Memory: The murderers were among us. "A good comrade: Professionally capable and impeccable in his lifestyle"
  6. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 32
  7. ↑ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, June 5, 2018, p. 8
  8. ↑ Michael Berger, ... as if nothing had happened , Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, June 5, 2018, p. 8. To present Beyer's study.
  9. ↑ Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, June 5, 2018, p. 8
  10. ^ Ministry of Social Affairs presents results of the medical history study on personal continuities in psychiatry in Lower Saxony after 1945 , Lower Saxony Ministry for Social Affairs, Health and Equal Opportunities, June 4, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Baumert, Willi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist and euthanasia offender
DATE OF BIRTH May 26, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Osnabrück
DATE OF DEATH February 10, 1984