Phases in the Postwar German Reception of the “Euthanasia Program” (1939–1945) Involving the Killing of the Mentally disabled and its Exploitation by Neuroscientists

Peiffer, J.

doi:10.1080/09647040500503954

Cited by 12 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Arguably and indirectly, they are culpable of the genocide of millions in the Holocaust, since the 'euthanasia' programs were the proving ground for 'efficient' mass murder. These programs produced immense suffering by patients and their families, not only from the killing, but also from the massive deception of this 'ill-kept secret' [15] . Admitting guilt and fearing prosecution, some of the worst perpetrator neuroscientists, such as Schneider [18,80] and De Crinis [81] , committed suicide at the end of the war.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The zeal of neuroscientist killers is tragically demonstrated by the continued murder of patients in Bavaria after the war had officially ended, not to cease until American soldiers interceded with their weapons drawn [55] . Notably, Hitler had rejected an offer from two Catholic bishops to take over the costs of care for these patients, suggesting against an economic explanation for 'euthanasia' and favoring racial hygiene as the true motivation [15] .…”

Section: 'The Needle Belongs In the Hands Of The Doctor' [52] : Killimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Actually, neuroscientists played central roles in Nazi medicine, since Nazi eugenics policies such as forced sterilization and so-called 'euthanasia' primarily targeted neurologic and psychiatric (neuropsychiatric) patients [8] . The emerging body of work on Nazi medicine in general, spurred by debates in the 1980s, and the discovery of Hallervorden's brain collection in the early 1980s [9] were motivating factors for the late Tübingen Emeritus Professor of Neuropathology Jürgen Peiffer (1922Peiffer ( -2006 to author a number of works mainly in German on the involvement of neuroscientists in the Nazi period [10][11][12][13][14] . Peiffer's work was aided by the sudden availability of 30,000 'euthanasia' victim files kept by the former East German secret service and state archives after Germany's 1990 reunification [15] .…”

Section: Introduction and Brief Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The emerging body of work on Nazi medicine in general, spurred by debates in the 1980s, and the discovery of Hallervorden's brain collection in the early 1980s [9] were motivating factors for the late Tübingen Emeritus Professor of Neuropathology Jürgen Peiffer (1922Peiffer ( -2006 to author a number of works mainly in German on the involvement of neuroscientists in the Nazi period [10][11][12][13][14] . Peiffer's work was aided by the sudden availability of 30,000 'euthanasia' victim files kept by the former East German secret service and state archives after Germany's 1990 reunification [15] . The availability of this new documentary information was paramount, given that many of the collaborating neuroscientists destroyed incriminating files after the war or that such files were destroyed during Allied bombing [12] .…”

Section: Introduction and Brief Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was likely the attempted whitewashing of German neuroscience, fear of Nestbeschmutzung (fouling one's own nest), and avoidance of confronting the past [15] that caused a four-decade gap between the initial criticism in 1949 by neurologist Leo Alexander (1905Alexander ( -1985 of the unethical activities of Hallervorden [16] and Georg Schaltenbrand in the Nazi era [17] and the works of neuroscientists in the 1990s. Even as late as 1974, the major German scientific institute, the Max Planck Society (MPG -Max-PlanckGesellschaft ), a successor agency to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute (KWI), obtained a court injunction to prevent publication of an article about Nazi euthanasia and neurological research at the KWI, calling the attempt 'slanderous' [18] despite Alexander's earlier reports and works from the 1940s.…”

Section: Introduction and Brief Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Central Role of Neuroscientists under National Socialism

Zeidman

2016

War Neurology

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Neuroscientists played central roles in the victimization of colleagues and their patients during the era of National Socialism from 1933 to 1945. After helping dismiss Jewish and nonideologically aligned colleagues, German neuroscientists were among the physicians and researchers who joined the Nazi Party and affiliated groups in record numbers. Forced sterilization and then so-called 'euthanasia' of neurological and psychiatric patients were planned and executed by prominent German and Austrian neuroscientists. Other neuroscientists collaborated indirectly by using patients for unethical experimentation to discover the cause of multiple sclerosis or to try to induce epileptic convulsions in a hypoxic state. Some merely used neuropathological material from murdered patients for publications in scientific journals. In the totalitarian state, research funding and academic advancement were awarded to physicians engaged in eugenics research. Opportunism and ideologically tainted science without regard to medical ethics were the motivating factors for collaborating neuroscientists. Some German and Austrian neuroscientists tried to resist Nazi policies, although much more passively than their colleagues in German-occupied countries. French, Dutch, Norwegian, and Danish neuroscientists actively resisted the Nazification of their profession from the beginning and helped to save some patients and colleagues, at great personal risk. Many German, Austrian, Czech, and Polish neurologists were murdered in the Holocaust, and hundreds of thousands of neurological and psychiatric patients were sterilized or murdered in just 12 years. The Nazis used the 'successful' techniques developed in the 'euthanasia' programs to carry out the mass murder of millions in the Holocaust. Today's neuroscientists are obligated to learn of the ethical violations of their predecessors 70-80 years ago. No law will prevent abandonment of the basic principles of ethical patient care and professionalism that can occur in any totalitarian state, but neuroscientists can possibly prevent it.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: 'The Needle Belongs In the Hands Of The Doctor' [52] : Killimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction and Brief Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction and Brief Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introduction and Brief Historiographymentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Central Role of Neuroscientists under National Socialism

Zeidman

2016

War Neurology

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German neurology and neurologists during the Third Reich: the aftermath

2016

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The article discusses the consequences for neurology as a discipline which resulted from neurologists' participation in the crimes committed under National Socialism (NS). Chronologically, the current literature distinguishes mainly four overlapping stages: (1) a first phase was characterized by legal persecution and "denazification", which was also the time of the Nuremberg doctors' trial in which no neurologists were on trial. A detailed documentation of the trial for the German medical profession was published by Alexander Mitscherlich. (2) In the subsequent practice of wide amnestying and reintegration of former Nazi followers during the 1950s, neurologists were no exception as its elite continued in their positions. The year 1953 was the year of the Lisbon scandal, when chiefly Dutch representatives protested against the participation of Julius Hallervorden in the International Congress of Neurology. The newly founded societies, the German Society for Neurology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurologie, DGN) and the German Society for Psychiatry and Neurology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie und Neurologie, DGPN), unanimously supported their member. (3) The next period was characterized by a nascent criticism of the prevailing attitude of covering up the crimes committed by physicians during the Nazi period. The discovery of incriminating brain sections at various Max Planck Institutes brought neurology to the focus of the debate. (4) Since the 1980s and 1990s historians (of medicine) have been systematically examining medicine's Nazi past in a professional way, which resulted in a noticeable increase of knowledge. Additionally, a new generation of scholars provoked a change of mind insofar as they recognized medicine's responsibility for the crimes committed between 1933 and 1945. We expect that future historical research will further elucidate the history of neurology during the NS regime and have consequences for our current understanding of research ethics.

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Renaming of Hallervorden–Spatz disease: the second man behind the name of the disease

Voges

Kupsch

2021

J Neural Transm

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Hallervorden–Spatz disease (HSD) has been recently renamed to pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN) and neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation (NBIA), mainly due to the unethical behavior of Julius Hallervorden in the National Socialist (NS) euthanasia program of the Nazi Third Reich. The role of the second name giver in the NS euthanasia program is less clear. Hugo Spatz was the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch during World War II (WWII), renamed to Max Planck Institute after 1945. After the war, he headed the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main. The present study investigates the potential involvement of Hugo Spatz in the NS euthanasia program. In the present study, we compared a list of euthanasia victims from the German Federal Archive Berlin (30.146 cases published after the reunification of Germany, BArch R179) with the files of the collection of specimens from 1940 until 1945 of Hugo Spatz as listed in the Archive of the Max Planck Society Berlin-Dahlem (n = 305). Furthermore, the old term HSD and the new terms PKAN and NBIA were systematically searched in PubMed from 1946, through January 2019 to evaluate the renaming process from HSD to PKAN/NBIA. Following Hugo Spatz’s death in 1969 growing evidence indicated that he may have taken part in the NS euthanasia program. This study identifies 4 euthanized victims in the patient files of Hugo Spatz from 1940 to 1945, suggesting involvement of Hugo Spatz in the NS euthanasia program. This further strengthens the argument that the former HSD should be exclusively referred to as PKAN or NBIA.

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Phases in the Postwar German Reception of the “Euthanasia Program” (1939–1945) Involving the Killing of the Mentally disabled and its Exploitation by Neuroscientists

Cited by 12 publications

References 16 publications

The Central Role of Neuroscientists under National Socialism

The Central Role of Neuroscientists under National Socialism

German neurology and neurologists during the Third Reich: the aftermath

Renaming of Hallervorden–Spatz disease: the second man behind the name of the disease

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