Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer
Encyclopedia
Otmar Freiherr
von Verschuer (16 July 1896, Wildeck
, Hesse-Nassau – 8 August 1969) was a German
human biologist
and eugenicist
concerned primarily with "racial hygiene
" and twin research
. He became Secretary, German Society for Race Hygiene (Tübingen) in 1924, and worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
(KWI-A or KWIfA) in Dahlem(Berlin
), from its founding in 1927 until its dissolution in 1945: first as director of the Department of Human Genetics, then as director of the Division on Twin Research, finally succeeding Eugen Fischer
as Director of the KWI-A in 1942.
He was also associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Genetic Biology and Racial Hygiene (Institut für Erbbiologie und Rassenhygiene).
Verschuer did not formally join the Nazi party until 1940, but he participated in activities that strongly advanced the Nazi agenda to protect Nordic peoples (‘Aryans
’) from ‘contamination’ by ‘inferior races’, then, at the close of the war and beyond, hid or destroyed the record of those activities and other activities carried on by KWI-A personnel.
Two of Verschuer's most well-known assistants were Karin Magnussen
and Josef Mengele
. Karin Magnussen studied eyes from living twins at Auschwitz harvested for her by Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele was a SS
physician at the Auschwitz death camp who later became known as the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz.
According to sections 263 and 264 of the 1927 General German Penal Code, "... sterilizations with a medical indication would remain exempt from punishment... in accordance with section 263 (as the practice of a conscientious doctor), or in accordance with section 264 (as not contra bona mores),...".
Reasons for sterilization included the "high probability that the offspring would suffer from serious physical or mental genetic defects", such as:
These attitudes toward sterilization were unsurprising, as eugenics
is about racial 'hygiene': the purification process whereby 'genetically defective' people (because of race, mental illness, epilepsy, criminality) are removed from the volk ("people", or nation).
Most cities in Germany developed plans to carry out the new sterilization law. Frankfurt am Main set up an Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene at Frankfurt University, and asked Verschuer to become its director. Verschuer took the post in 1935, while also remaining associated with the KWI-A.
"[Verschuer] was enthusiastic about the new law and its results.
"Verschuer, being an enthusiastic Nazi and well positioned in the apparatus, consolidated all the tasks of the new law under his control."
and Alexander Pushkin:
was in fact a somewhat unscientific way of studying genetics, in a way that could be easily be manipulated to manufacture tailor-made results. Once Fischer retired from the KWI-A, Verschuer became the new Director, continuing twin study (with subordinates Siegfried Liebau and Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, and Karin Magnussen
at Dahlem) from a somewhat different perspective that may have been more than a renaming: phenogenetics
. Phenogenetics included environmental relationships both before and after birth.
Verschuer received Heinrich Himmler
's permission to work in Auschwitz from 1944 on. In a report to the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; DFG) from 1944, Verschuer talked about Mengele's assistance in supplying the KWIfA with some "scientific materials" from Auschwitz:
Verschuer also noted in the report that the war conditions had made it difficult for the KWI-A to procure "twin materials" for study, and that Mengele's unique position at Auschwitz offered a special opportunity in this respect. (In the summer of 1944, Mengele and his Jewish slave assistant Dr. Miklos Nyiszli
sent other "scientific materials" to the KWI-A, including the bodies of murdered Gypsies, internal organs of dead children, skeletons of two murdered Jews, and blood samples of twins infected by Mengele with typhus.)
"... Fischer and Verschuer ... were guests of honor to a working congress at the inauguration of the 'Frankfurt Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question' ... on March 27/28, 1941. The aspired goal of the 'total solution' to the 'Jewish qustion,' as was bluntly stated here, was the Volkstod ('death of the nation'). The economist Peter-Heinz Seraphim (1902-1979) pointed out for consideration that the deportation for forced labor in camps in Poland or an overseas colony could also have the consequence of 'social pauperization and upheaval,' but 'by no means the physical self-disintegration of Jewry, for the death of a nation is never a fast death.' ...
Army.
"Interestingly enough, the correspondence between Verschuer and Fischer is missing from the archives for the period in which they continued to correspond about their presentation of 'facts' to the denazification offices. ... " Indeed, even now it is difficult or impossible to access records during this period. See Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
.
, assigned to his case. In a letter to his wife from 1946, Alexander wrote:
Alexander initiated investigations into the location of the incriminating collection but could not locate it—it had been sent to an unknown destination in Berlin and from there vanished out of sight; Alexander ruefully concluded that Verschuer had destroyed it.
Later investigators had difficulty getting hard evidence of the gruesome role they felt Verschuer played in the Holocaust.
Otto Hahn set up a commission at the KWG to investigate charges against Verschuer. Under the leadership of a judge, Kurt von Lewinski of the KWG's Institute of Law, four members of the KWG (Otto Warburg, Robert Havemann, Kurt Gottschaldt, and Hans Nachtsheim) contemplated both questions of specific guilt and the scientific value of Verschuer's work itself. "Their decision was severe: Not only was Verschuer's link to Auschwitz established but he was judged to be a 'racist fanatic.' Thus ended Verschuer's career at the KWIA."
Ultimately Verschuer was judged to be a Nazi fellow traveler (Mitläufer) - a relatively mild categorization -- fined 600 Reichmark, and released from custody. "He was free to continue his career, even if it would not be in Berlin."
"Publicizing German medical atrocities could undermine wholesale public confidence in clinical science." To avoid the appearance that the entire medical community could no longer be trusted, the Nuremberg Medical Trial political appointees "... presented medical researchers as having been 'perverted' by the manipulative control of the SS and as poisoned by Nazism..." and instead that
"the human experiments were so ill-conceived as not to be worthy of the status of science..."
"[T]he authorities considered that further investigation of hospitals and universities was
undesirable, ... [because] if understaken on a large scale it might result in necessary removal
from German medicine of large number of highly qualified men at a time when their services
are most needed."
Thus, the ties of the German medical community -- especially those at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes -- were not in any way associated with the death camps; therefore, medical science and the scientists should really be acceptable to the German public and the rest of the world. The SS, and medical personnel such as Mengele who were directly involved with the death camps, were fingered as the most responsible for the atrocities of National Socialism.
In 1951, Verschuer was awarded the prestigious professorship of human genetics at the University of Münster
, where he established one of the largest centers of genetics
research in West Germany
. Like many "racial hygienists" of the Nazi period, and many American eugenicists, Verschuer was successful in redefining himself as a genetics researcher after the war, aided by the German public's desire to dissociate itself from the war's atrocities.
Verschuer had been accepted during the war as a member of the American Eugenics Society
, a position he kept until his death.
When Verschuer died in 1969 (in an automobile accident), obituaries in German scientific journals made no mention of his Nazi involvement.
Freiherr
The German titles Freiherr and Freifrau and Freiin are titles of nobility, used preceding a person's given name or, after 1919, before the surname...
von Verschuer (16 July 1896, Wildeck
Wildeck
Wildeck is a community in Hersfeld-Rotenburg district in northeastern Hesse, Germany lying right at the boundary with Thuringia, 54 km southeast of Kassel.- Location :...
, Hesse-Nassau – 8 August 1969) was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
human biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
and eugenicist
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
concerned primarily with "racial hygiene
Racial hygiene
Racial hygiene was a set of early twentieth century state sanctioned policies by which certain groups of individuals were allowed to procreate and others not, with the expressed purpose of promoting certain characteristics deemed to be particularly desirable...
" and twin research
Nazi twin study
The methodology of twin study has been used for fraudulent purposes by many scientists. Two famous examples are the "Burt Affair" and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer's work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics....
. He became Secretary, German Society for Race Hygiene (Tübingen) in 1924, and worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics was founded in 1927. The Rockefeller Foundation supported both the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Psychiatry and the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics...
(KWI-A or KWIfA) in Dahlem(Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
), from its founding in 1927 until its dissolution in 1945: first as director of the Department of Human Genetics, then as director of the Division on Twin Research, finally succeeding Eugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer
Eugen Fischer was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics between 1927 and 1942...
as Director of the KWI-A in 1942.
He was also associated with the Frankfurt Institute for Genetic Biology and Racial Hygiene (Institut für Erbbiologie und Rassenhygiene).
Verschuer did not formally join the Nazi party until 1940, but he participated in activities that strongly advanced the Nazi agenda to protect Nordic peoples (‘Aryans
Aryan
Aryan is an English language loanword derived from Sanskrit ārya and denoting variously*In scholarly usage:**Indo-Iranian languages *in dated usage:**the Indo-European languages more generally and their speakers...
’) from ‘contamination’ by ‘inferior races’, then, at the close of the war and beyond, hid or destroyed the record of those activities and other activities carried on by KWI-A personnel.
Two of Verschuer's most well-known assistants were Karin Magnussen
Karin Magnussen
Karin Magnussen was a researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics during Germany's Third Reich, known for her 1936 publication "Race and Population Policy Tools", and her studies of heterochromia iridis using iris specimens from Auschwitz concentration...
and Josef Mengele
Josef Mengele
Josef Rudolf Mengele , also known as the Angel of Death was a German SS officer and a physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. He earned doctorates in anthropology from Munich University and in medicine from Frankfurt University...
. Karin Magnussen studied eyes from living twins at Auschwitz harvested for her by Mengele at Auschwitz. Mengele was a SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
physician at the Auschwitz death camp who later became known as the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz.
Sterilization
Verschuer argued in principle for the eugenic sterilization of the "feeble-minded, schizophrenics, the manic depressive, epileptics, psychopaths, chorea sufferers, the congenitally blind and deaf-mute, whereby he qualified his statement by referring to the uncertain prognosis of heredity in such cases as manic-depressive insanity, epilepsy, and deaf-mutism." He expressed the opinion that this issue had a moral, theological aspect. Eugenic sterilization (which Verschuer equated with medical curative treatment) was "no 'unauthorized intervention into the natural process of creation;' the willingness to make oneself sterile is rather a command of Christian charity. The fulcrum and hub of the argumentation comprised the concept of 'sacrifice':
"'It is demanded of us Christians, who follow the example of our master, that we be willing to sacrifice our lives in the service of Christian charity. Christian charity extends to children who will be born. We are therefore obligated to extend the circle of humans to those who are not yet born, and I believe it is justified to demand from people a lesser sacrifice than the sacrifice of life, namely to forego having children, for the love of children that are expected to be diseased, so that from the perspective of Christian charity sterilization must be regarded as justified."
According to sections 263 and 264 of the 1927 General German Penal Code, "... sterilizations with a medical indication would remain exempt from punishment... in accordance with section 263 (as the practice of a conscientious doctor), or in accordance with section 264 (as not contra bona mores),...".
Reasons for sterilization included the "high probability that the offspring would suffer from serious physical or mental genetic defects", such as:
- congenital feeble-mindedness
- schizophrenia
- manic-depressive insanity
- hereditary epilepsy
- hereditary St. Vitus's dance (Huntington's Chorea)
- hereditary blindness
- hereditary deafness
- "serious hereditary physical deformities"
- "serious alcoholism"
These attitudes toward sterilization were unsurprising, as eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
is about racial 'hygiene': the purification process whereby 'genetically defective' people (because of race, mental illness, epilepsy, criminality) are removed from the volk ("people", or nation).
Most cities in Germany developed plans to carry out the new sterilization law. Frankfurt am Main set up an Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene at Frankfurt University, and asked Verschuer to become its director. Verschuer took the post in 1935, while also remaining associated with the KWI-A.
"[Verschuer] was enthusiastic about the new law and its results.
"'We know today that the life of a Volk is only guaranteed when the racial uniqueness and hereditary health of the gene pool ... is maintained. The nub of the population policy in the Third Reich is therefore: hereditary and racial care or hygiene. ...
"'The National Socialistic State with exceptional energy has assumed [the responsibility] for the practical administration of hereditary and racial care. The first goal was the fight against racial alienation through the Jews. The second deed is the damming up [i.e., sterilization] of those with hereditary illnesses through the Law for Prevention of Congenitally Ill Progeny. In the two years since [this law] has been in place, approximately 100,000 sterilizations have been carried out.'"
"Verschuer, being an enthusiastic Nazi and well positioned in the apparatus, consolidated all the tasks of the new law under his control."
"Positive" eugenics
Verschuer opposed euthanasia to some degree. He also opposed the idea of breeding supermen. However, he was a supporter of "positive" eugenics: incentives to favor the propagation of Aryans. In 1933 he wrote an article in August/September issue of the newsletter Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft evangelischer Männer und Frauen Thüringens, which emphasized education and training, tax legislation, control of immigration and emigration, genetic biological stock-taking and marriage counseling for prospective parents, but also indirectly demanded bars to marriage for "those of alien ancestry," "ill and deformed persons and the genetically ill from encumbered families." He mentioned sterilization, but "only in passing."Miscegenation
Verschuer felt that that when a superior race mixes with an inferior race (mulattos), it always brings the superior race down. He noted two exceptions to this, however: Booker T. WashingtonBooker T. Washington
Booker Taliaferro Washington was an American educator, author, orator, and political leader. He was the dominant figure in the African-American community in the United States from 1890 to 1915...
and Alexander Pushkin:
"The crossing of intellectually very capable races with intellectually less capable ones, e.g. Europeans with Negroes, yields a product that is between these races intellectually [...] Occasionally, an individual half-breed of this kind can also be strikingly intellectually capable (Pushkin, Washington), as is to be expected from the laws of heredity. The assumption that half-breeds are always worse than both parents intellectually -- or even morally -- is incorrect."
Twin research and medical atrocities
Twin research was important because it established a connection between race with eugenics and studies of twins. Nazi twin studyNazi twin study
The methodology of twin study has been used for fraudulent purposes by many scientists. Two famous examples are the "Burt Affair" and Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer's work at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics....
was in fact a somewhat unscientific way of studying genetics, in a way that could be easily be manipulated to manufacture tailor-made results. Once Fischer retired from the KWI-A, Verschuer became the new Director, continuing twin study (with subordinates Siegfried Liebau and Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, and Karin Magnussen
Karin Magnussen
Karin Magnussen was a researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics during Germany's Third Reich, known for her 1936 publication "Race and Population Policy Tools", and her studies of heterochromia iridis using iris specimens from Auschwitz concentration...
at Dahlem) from a somewhat different perspective that may have been more than a renaming: phenogenetics
Phenogenetics
Phenogenetics was a new paradigm used to study genetics as pursued at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics. Phenogenetics would more accurately be described to be more comprehensive than genetics, to be extended into what is now understood to be epigenetics,...
. Phenogenetics included environmental relationships both before and after birth.
Verschuer received Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's permission to work in Auschwitz from 1944 on. In a report to the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; DFG) from 1944, Verschuer talked about Mengele's assistance in supplying the KWIfA with some "scientific materials" from Auschwitz:
"My assistant, Dr. Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) has joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer and camp physician in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Anthropological investigations on the most diverse racial groups of this concentration camp are being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]; the blood samples are being sent to my laboratory for analysis."
Verschuer also noted in the report that the war conditions had made it difficult for the KWI-A to procure "twin materials" for study, and that Mengele's unique position at Auschwitz offered a special opportunity in this respect. (In the summer of 1944, Mengele and his Jewish slave assistant Dr. Miklos Nyiszli
Miklos Nyiszli
Miklós Nyiszli was a Jewish prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Nyiszli, along with his wife and young daughter, were transported to Auschwitz in June 1944...
sent other "scientific materials" to the KWI-A, including the bodies of murdered Gypsies, internal organs of dead children, skeletons of two murdered Jews, and blood samples of twins infected by Mengele with typhus.)
Genocide of Jews and Gypsies
"In his talk about the "Race Biology of the Jews" Verschuer contradicted the generally accepted idea that Jews could be recognized by the shape of their nose or their blood group. Instead he referred to the emerging science of comparative race pathology . A number of illnesses and disorders occurred more frequently in Jews than among the non-Jewish population: diabetes, neuroses, flat feet, myonomes, xeroderma pegmentosum, hemophilia, and deaf-mutedness. 'Amarotic idiocy' (Tay-Sach-s syndrome) and torsion dystonia are particularly prevalent among the Eastern European Jews. To explain this phenomenon Verschuer advanced population-genetic argumentation: Through conscious segregation from their "host volk" the Jews had '"bred" their race themselves' in genetic isolation."
"... he described attributes that were supposedly typical for the Jewish population, including dispositions for and resistance against certain illnesses, emphasized the 'Jew's need for doctors and fear of illness' and even referred to allegedly specific forms of criminality: '[...] the Jews showed a reduced rate of crime for assault and theft, but penalties were considerably above average for defamation, fraud and forgery [...].' As an explanation, Verschuer, picking up on Fischer, alleged 'that the typical characteristics for today's Jew are mainly derived from the Near Eastern-Oriental basic stock,' which had 'experienced a certain loosening up' through miscegnation." --
"... Fischer and Verschuer ... were guests of honor to a working congress at the inauguration of the 'Frankfurt Institute for the Investigation of the Jewish Question' ... on March 27/28, 1941. The aspired goal of the 'total solution' to the 'Jewish qustion,' as was bluntly stated here, was the Volkstod ('death of the nation'). The economist Peter-Heinz Seraphim (1902-1979) pointed out for consideration that the deportation for forced labor in camps in Poland or an overseas colony could also have the consequence of 'social pauperization and upheaval,' but 'by no means the physical self-disintegration of Jewry, for the death of a nation is never a fast death.' ...
Erasing the KWI-A record (1945)
As the war was drawing to a close in 1945, Verschuer moved the files of the KWI-A from Dahlem to his own home, hoping for a more favorable response from the advancing Allied armies than from the advancing SovietSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
Army.
"On February 3, 1945, a directive was issued by ... Albert Speer... to the operations staff of the KWG, instructing that the institutes under its control be relocated from endangered areas. Ernst Telschow forwarded this directive to the KWI-A, where it arrived on February 5 ... Had it been ... Verschuer's express goal to hold out in Dahlem as long as possible and await the further course of events ... by February 1945 it must have been clear to him that the fall of Berlin was merely a matter of time. Relocating the institute appeared imperative, and in secret Verschuer already had begun the preparations for a move. (Verschuer to Lenz, 9/2/1945, MPG Archive, Dept. III, rep. 86 B, No. 12.) So Speer's directive came at just the right time ... "
Later, however, Telschow "informed Verschuer orally that Speer 'in retrospect [had] not desired' the 'application of the relocation of the KWI-A directive' to the KWI-A. ... Thus it can be presumed that Verschuer was quite aware that he had received a green light to relocate his institute neither from the General Administration nor from the Armaments Ministry. However, when Engelhardt Bühler ... managed to organize a trailer truck around February 9, 1945 -- to everyone's surprise, Verschuer acted without delay, supported by Speer's written command to relocate, abruptly overrode the oral counter-command communicated by Telschow and set the relocation in motion. On February 12, 1945, when part of the material sent to Beetz had already been loaded on the truck, he sent a circular to the department heads Abel, Diehl, Gottschaldt, Lenz, and Nachtsheim, officially informing them that the majority of the institute's inventory was to be relocated to his family estate in Solz near Bebra."
"Verschuer confirmed that some of the material involved was 'secret files, which by no means may fall into enemy hands,' asked Nachtsheim to attend to the matter and to give the caretaker the order to burn the material 'in good time'.
"On February 17, 1945 Verschuer laconically informed the General Administration that the relocation of the institute to Solz had been completed 'without significant inconvenience.'"
"In the end, the KWI-A was left with two rooms of the Haus am See, in which institute property -- 'numerous scientific apparatus, including special fabrications [...] valuable optics, microtome, projection equipment, part of the scientific library, the twin archive and additional scientific materials' -- were stored. Karl Diehl managed to rescue some of these materials in September 1945 when the building was requisitioned for good by the Soviet military authorities."
"Interestingly enough, the correspondence between Verschuer and Fischer is missing from the archives for the period in which they continued to correspond about their presentation of 'facts' to the denazification offices. ... " Indeed, even now it is difficult or impossible to access records during this period. See Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
At the end of World War II, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Society, and the institutes associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were renamed "Max Planck" institutes. The records that were archived under the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes were placed in the...
.
Postwar investigation
Verschuer was never tried for war crimes despite many indications that he not only was fully cognisant of Mengele's work at Auschwitz, but even encouraged and collaborated with Mengele in some of his most grisly research. However solid evidence of Verschuer's willing collaboration could not be established, much to the disappointment of the principal post-war Allied investigator, Leo AlexanderLeo Alexander
Dr. Leo Alexander was an American psychiatrist, neurologist, educator, and author, of Austrian-Jewish origin. He was a key medical advisor during the Nuremberg Trials...
, assigned to his case. In a letter to his wife from 1946, Alexander wrote:
It sometimes seems as if the Nazis had taken special pains in making practically every nightmare come true. Some new evidence has come in where two doctors in Berlin, one a man and the other a woman, collected eyes of different colour. It seems that the concentration camps were combed for people whose one eye had a slightly different color than the other. Who ever [sic] was unlucky enough to possess such a pair of slightly unequal eyes had them cut out and was killed, the eyes being sent to Berlin. This is the carrying out into reality of an old gruesome German fairy tale which is included in the Tales of HoffmannE.T.A. HoffmannErnst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann , better known by his pen name E.T.A. Hoffmann , was a German Romantic author of fantasy and horror, a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist...
, where Dr Coppelius posing as a sandman comes at night and cuts out children's eyes when they are tired. The grim part of the story is that Doctors von Verschuer and Magnussen in Berlin did prefer children and particularly twins. There is no end to this nightmare, at least 23 are being tried now and, I trust, the others will follow later.
Alexander initiated investigations into the location of the incriminating collection but could not locate it—it had been sent to an unknown destination in Berlin and from there vanished out of sight; Alexander ruefully concluded that Verschuer had destroyed it.
Later investigators had difficulty getting hard evidence of the gruesome role they felt Verschuer played in the Holocaust.
Otto Hahn set up a commission at the KWG to investigate charges against Verschuer. Under the leadership of a judge, Kurt von Lewinski of the KWG's Institute of Law, four members of the KWG (Otto Warburg, Robert Havemann, Kurt Gottschaldt, and Hans Nachtsheim) contemplated both questions of specific guilt and the scientific value of Verschuer's work itself. "Their decision was severe: Not only was Verschuer's link to Auschwitz established but he was judged to be a 'racist fanatic.' Thus ended Verschuer's career at the KWIA."
"On 7 November 1946 Wolfson [U.S. Counsel for War Crimes] drew on evidence provided by the psychologist Kurt Gottschaldt that Verschuer had been ‘informed of the detailed setup as it existed in Auschwitz.’ Not unreasonably, Wolfson recommended that [Karin] Magnussen, a known Nazi activist, be arrested and interrogated. Verschuer counter-attacked that the denunciations derived from communists. [...] Wolfson persisted in his accusations by placing Mengele at the head of a table of Auschwitz officers in 12 February 1947. Attempts were made to have the de-Nazification verdict revoked, resulting in a third interrogation of Verschuer on 13 May 1947, when Verschuer told of Mengele’s excellent relations with his patients in Auschwitz. ... Verschuer counter-attacked that Havemann’s evidence against him was provided by the communist sympathizer, Kurt Gottschaldt. ...
"Verschuer consistently pressed home the point that those discrediting him were 'communist agents.'"
Ultimately Verschuer was judged to be a Nazi fellow traveler (Mitläufer) - a relatively mild categorization -- fined 600 Reichmark, and released from custody. "He was free to continue his career, even if it would not be in Berlin."
"Publicizing German medical atrocities could undermine wholesale public confidence in clinical science." To avoid the appearance that the entire medical community could no longer be trusted, the Nuremberg Medical Trial political appointees "... presented medical researchers as having been 'perverted' by the manipulative control of the SS and as poisoned by Nazism..." and instead that
"the human experiments were so ill-conceived as not to be worthy of the status of science..."
"[T]he authorities considered that further investigation of hospitals and universities was
undesirable, ... [because] if understaken on a large scale it might result in necessary removal
from German medicine of large number of highly qualified men at a time when their services
are most needed."
"On 19 September 1949 Heubner, and the KWG scientists Adolf Butenandt, Max Hartmann, and Boris Rajewsky cleared Verschuer. This Dahlem commission marked the reverse of the NMTDoctors' TrialThe Doctors' Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. These trials were held before U.S...
, as it was a tribunal of peers (mostly tarnished by various degrees of complicity under National Socialism). The commission could easily reject that Verschuer was a racial fanatic, or that he collaborated with the SS -- for science under National Socialism did not necessarily work this way. It played down the significance of the Mengele link by stressing that he was only a camp doctor, who would have followed SS regulations against spreading information about Auschwitz as an extermination camp."
Thus, the ties of the German medical community -- especially those at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes -- were not in any way associated with the death camps; therefore, medical science and the scientists should really be acceptable to the German public and the rest of the world. The SS, and medical personnel such as Mengele who were directly involved with the death camps, were fingered as the most responsible for the atrocities of National Socialism.
Later life
In late 1945 or early 1946 Verschuer petitioned the mayor of Frankfurt to allow him to reestablish the KWI-A. However the commission in charge of rebuilding the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft decreed that "Verschuer should be considered not as a collaborator, but one of the most dangerous Nazi activists of the Third Reich." The KWI-A was not reestablished.In 1951, Verschuer was awarded the prestigious professorship of human genetics at the University of Münster
University of Münster
The University of Münster is a public university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The WWU is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities...
, where he established one of the largest centers of genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
research in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. Like many "racial hygienists" of the Nazi period, and many American eugenicists, Verschuer was successful in redefining himself as a genetics researcher after the war, aided by the German public's desire to dissociate itself from the war's atrocities.
Verschuer had been accepted during the war as a member of the American Eugenics Society
American Eugenics Society
The American Eugenics Society was a society established in 1922 to promote eugenics in the United States.It was the result of the Second International Conference on Eugenics . The founders included Madison Grant, Harry H. Laughlin, Irving Fisher, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Henry Crampton...
, a position he kept until his death.
When Verschuer died in 1969 (in an automobile accident), obituaries in German scientific journals made no mention of his Nazi involvement.
See also
- ex-Nazis
- Research Materials: Max Planck Society ArchiveResearch Materials: Max Planck Society ArchiveAt the end of World War II, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Society, and the institutes associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were renamed "Max Planck" institutes. The records that were archived under the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes were placed in the...
- Nazi eugenicsNazi eugenicsNazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's racially-based social policies that placed the improvement of the Aryan race through eugenics at the center of their concerns...
- Subsequent Nuremberg TrialsSubsequent Nuremberg TrialsThe Subsequent Nuremberg Trials were a series of twelve U.S...
- The Doctors' TrialDoctors' TrialThe Doctors' Trial was the first of 12 trials for war crimes that the United States authorities held in their occupation zone in Nuremberg, Germany after the end of World War II. These trials were held before U.S...
External links
- "In the name of science" EMBO reportsEMBO JournalThe EMBO Journal is a peer-reviewed scientific journal focusing on full-length papers describing original research of general interest in molecular biology and related areas. The journal's editorial office is in Heidelberg, Germany. The journal is published by Nature Publishing Group on behalf of...
article about KWI scientists' wartime atrocities, with images of Verschuer - "Skeletons in the Closet of German Science" Deutsche WelleDeutsche WelleDeutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
article on Verschuer's research connection to Mengele