Willi Enke

Willi Werner Enke (born March 6, 1895 in St. Gallen ; † December 24, 1974 in Marburg ) was a German psychiatrist , neurologist and university professor who was director of the Bernburg State Hospitals and Nursing Institution at the time of National Socialism .

Life

After attending school in Plauen , Enke took part in the First World War as a volunteer , achieved the rank of sergeant and received the Iron Cross, second class. From 1918 to 1922 he studied medicine at the University of Leipzig and was at the same time a member of a temporary volunteer regiment. After Medizinalpraktikum at the Dresden hospital, he was in 1923 approved and at the University of Greifswald Dr. med. PhD . He then worked briefly as an auxiliary or volunteer doctor at the Dresden Sanatorium and the Tübingen University Neurological Clinic. From 1924 he was an assistant doctor in Schkeuditz . From 1926 he worked under Ernst Kretschmer as a department head at the University Neurological Clinic in Marburg, where he completed his habilitation in 1929 . From 1929 Enke was a private lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Marburg .

Enke was married to Anna Karoline Elisabeth Enke (born January 31, 1902, † January 11, 1985), née Keil, since October 1923. Elisabeth Enke was also a specialist in neurology and psychiatry. The couple had three sons: the later psychotherapist and university professor Helmut (1927–2011) as well as Reinhold (* 1935) and finally Harald.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he joined the NSDAP in May 1933 (membership no. 2.828.291). In November 1933 he signed the professors' declaration of Adolf Hitler at German universities and colleges , although he had not yet been appointed professor. Enke became a member of the NS teachers' association (NSLB), the National Socialist German Medical Association (NSDÄB) and the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV). He also became a supporting member of the SS and joined the National Socialist Motor Vehicle Corps (NSKK) (previously Motor- SA ), where he worked as a storm doctor. Further memberships existed with the NSFK , the NSDDB , the Association for Germanness Abroad and the Reich Colonial Association .

In addition to activities as a regional trainer and judge at the Hereditary Health Court in Marburg, he also worked at the Racial Policy Office in Kurhessen from 1934 .

"The race and hereditary care based on biological principles consequently begins with the eradication of alien and hereditary diseases."

- Willi Enke in 1934 in the journal Medizin Klinik

Enke finally received an extraordinary professorship at the University of Marburg in 1935 . By Hans fly , since 1934 professor of dentistry at the University of Marburg use and the relevant Liason NSDAP, was promoted Enkes professorship because of his Nazi setting. Enke's superior Ernst Kretschmer and his colleague Friedrich Mauz were denounced by Fliege as having a liberal attitude . From 1937, according to Nagel, he was also a part-time associate professor at the University of Greifswald. In June 1937 he also became a member of the National Health Office of the NSDAP .

In January 1938, Enke took over as director of the state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg and held this position until the end of the Second World War . At the same time he was habilitated as an adjunct professor at the University of Halle and also a judge at the Dessau Hereditary Health Court . Under Enke, the state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg was restructured and modernized according to the familiar concept of the Marburg University Neurological Clinic, despite a low financial budget, based on the latest scientific findings. Furthermore, u. a. Employment measures for patients have also been intensified and measures taken to reduce the length of time patients stay in the facility. Enke's wife was obliged to work as a neurologist during the Second World War in the state sanatorium and nursing home in Bernburg.

In September 1940, the chief service officer of the Fuehrer's office, Viktor Brack , informed the director of the facility, Enke, that the facility he was running was intended for "Reich purposes". Enke himself was asked to obey this request. Finally, the Nazi killing center in Bernburg , headed by Irmfried Eberl , was housed in a separate part of the state hospital .

"Prof. Enke is also fully informed about our campaign. He is generally positive about our action, but has a number of concerns. In particular, he is convinced that a lot of sick people fall victim to our campaign without a corresponding attempt at therapy being made beforehand. As a result, he comes to the conclusion that before a patient falls victim to our action, the condition in which the patient is located should be imposed in those cases in which an attempt at therapy offers even the slightest chance of success, to make such a therapy attempt. Although this view is to be understood from a medical point of view, it cannot be carried out in the context of our campaign, which is why Prof. Enke views our campaign with a certain degree of caution.

- The head of the NS killing center in Bernburg, Irmfried Eberl, in his files around December 1941

post war period

Towards the end of the war, Enke was arrested by members of the US Army on April 16, 1945 and transferred to the American zone of occupation by the American military administration in July 1945 . In Darmstadt he was denazified in 1948 . After his American internment he was released to his family in Marburg in the spring of 1948. Enke immediately joined his wife's medical practice, who had settled in Marburg as a psychiatrist and neurologist. In 1948 he became a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Association of Brain-Wounded War Victims. Enke was investigated on suspicion of involvement in euthanasia crimes by the American military administration and the German public prosecutor's office, but the preliminary investigation was suspended until March 1950. At the beginning of the 1960s, Enke was questioned about the events of the Nazi killing facility set up in the fall of 1940 in a separate part of the Bernburg State Sanatorium, in which thousands of psychiatric patients and concentration camp prisoners were gassed . Enke denied having known anything about the delivery of the victims to the Nazi killing center: "This is the first time I hear today that this should have happened."

In 1950, following the advocacy of Werner Villinger , Enke became a senior doctor at the Hepatha Diaconal Institution in Treysa and held this position until he retired in 1963. He then helped set up the youth psychiatry in Delmenhorst . After a brief serious illness, Enke died in Marburg in 1974.

In February 2018, among other things, allegations were made against Enke in the Frankfurter Rundschau that he should have performed pneumoencephalographs on difficult-to- raise children in Hephata in order to prove highly controversial behavioral problems. The allegations raised were confirmed by an investigation by the Gießen medical historian Volker Roelcke in early 2019. Enke himself wrote about 800 cases in an article for a medical journal. In many cases he had performed the PEG without there being any medical indication for it.

Fonts

• Early contractures in dystrophia musculorum progressiva , Greifswald, medical dissertation, 1923.
• The psychomotor of the constitutional types: Experimental studies on handwriting, purpose and Expression movements , Leipzig 1930. From: Journal for Applied Psychology . Vol. 96 (1930), H. 3 and 4th
• The personality of the athletes , Leipzig 1936 (together with Ernst Kretschmer). Published in Spain in 1942 under the title La personalidad de los atleticos .
• Origin and essence of illness , Leipzig 1938. (together with Elisabeth Enke). From: Volksverband der Bücherfreunde: Scientific annual series ; Row 20, Vol. 2.

literature

• Ute Hoffmann / Dietmar Schulze: "... is being moved to another institution today" - National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the Bernburg State Sanatorium and Nursing Institution - a documentation , Dessau Regional Council, Dessau 1997. ( Online) (PDF; 1.1 MB)
• Klara Caterina Kelling: The first generation of resident doctors in Marburg. Her life and work , dissertation at the Medical Faculty of the University of Marburg 2010. ( online ; PDF; 2.6 MB)
• 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-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 .
• 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 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Willi Enke in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Willi Enke in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis
• Image by Willi Enke

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Willi Enke in the Catalogus Professorum Halensis
2. ↑ Medizinhistorisches Journal, Volumes 32–34, G. Olms., 1997, p. 172.
3. ^ ^{A b} Anne Christine Nagel: The Philipps University of Marburg in National Socialism: Documents on their history , Stuttgart 2000, p. 523.
4. ↑ Klara Caterina Kelling: The first generation of resident doctors in Marburg. Your life and your work , Marburg 2010, p. 79ff.
5. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 137.
6. ↑ Quoted from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 137.
7. ^ Anne Christine Nagel: The Philipps University of Marburg in National Socialism: Documents to their history , Stuttgart 2000, p. 240.
8. ↑ Ute Hoffmann / Dietmar Schulze: "... is being moved to another institution today" - National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the Bernburg State Sanatorium and Nursing Institution - a documentation , Dessau 1997, p. 16f.
9. ↑ Ute Hoffmann / Dietmar Schulze: "... is being moved to another institution today" - National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the Bernburg State Sanatorium and Nursing Institution - a documentation , Dessau 1997, p. 16.
10. ↑ Ute Hoffmann / Dietmar Schulze: "... is being moved to another institution today" - National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the Bernburg State Sanatorium and Nursing Institution - a documentation , Dessau 1997, p. 18.
11. ↑ Quoted from: Ute Hoffmann / Dietmar Schulze: "... is being moved to another institution today" - National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the Bernburg State Sanatorium and Nursing Institution - a documentation , Dessau Regional Council, Dessau 1997, p. 20f.
12. ↑ Ute Hoffmann / Dietmar Schulze: "... is being moved to another institution today" - National Socialist forced sterilization and "euthanasia" in the Bernburg State Sanatorium and Nursing Institution - a documentation , Dessau 1997, p. 86.
13. ↑ Klara Caterina Kelling: The first generation of resident doctors in Marburg. Your life and your work , Marburg 2010, pp. 84, 86.
14. ↑ Klara Caterina Kelling: The first generation of resident doctors in Marburg. Your life and your work , Marburg 2010, p. 89.
15. ↑ Klara Caterina Kelling: The first generation of resident doctors in Marburg. Your life and your work , Marburg 2010, p. 87.
16. ↑ 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, p. 172.
17. ↑ Klara Caterina Kelling: The first generation of resident doctors in Marburg. Your life and your work , Marburg 2010, p. 91.
18. ↑ Pitt von Bebenburg: When Jürgen's head was researched . In: Frankfurter Rundschau from February 13, 2018
19. ↑ Volker Roelcke: Pneumencephalographien in Hephata
20. ↑ Hessenschau: Hephata apologizes for medical abuse of children in care on February 28, 19
21. ↑ Hephata: Brain examinations on former children in care