Psychiatric crimes under National Socialism: a lecture revealed!

Psychiatric crimes under National Socialism: a lecture revealed!

In a recent lecture at Heidelberg University, Prof. Maike Rotzoll highlighted the cruel role of psychiatric institutions during National Socialism. These institutions became places of the murder in which numerous patients and in particular mentally ill people became victims of a cruel euthanasia program. Rotzoll's lecture entitled "After the sick murder" represents the entanglements of psychiatric practice in the crimes of National Socialism and shows how the institutional psychiatric system remained largely unchanged until the reform of psychiatry in the 1970s. Rotzoll, Professor of History of Pharmacy and Medicine at the University of Marburg, also addressed the long period of silence about these crimes and the need for its processing.

The Ruperto Carola Ring lecture, which included this lecture, has set itself the goal of presenting socially relevant research questions in different formats. The series is entitled "1945: Epoch threshold and area of ​​experience" and not only offers a retrospective interpretation of the end of the Second World War, but also a reconstruction of human experience and suffering of that time. For the conceptual design of this event, Prof. Dr. Manfred Berg. A total of six lectures take place on Mondays in the auditorium of the old university, whereby the records will later be available on Heionline.

The euthanasia program of the National Socialists

Between 1933 and 1945 at least 250,000 mentally ill and disabled people were murdered as part of the National Socialist Euthanasia program, an estimate that is taken up by the German Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Nerve medicine (DGPPN). Psychiatrists were not only involved in personal decisions about life and death, but also involved in the forced sterilization of up to 400,000 people. These crimes were legitimized by Hitler's letter of authorization from October 1939, which initiated the murder actions in specialized killing centers.

The effects of these atrocities are devastating. In the first years of action T4, which began in 1939, over 70,000 patients were murdered, of which at least 5,000 children and adolescents killed in so -called "children's departments". The campaign was officially stopped in August 1941, but the killing of patients in various facilities continued until the end of the war. These systematic murder actions stood in the context of a broader racist ideology that goes back to the Weimar Republic and was nourished by discourses on racial hygiene and Eugenik.

long -term consequences and processing

German psychiatry has been involved in intellectual, structural and personnel entanglement of these crimes, which was discussed again and again in the following decades. Numerous psychiatrists were never held accountable after the war, while leading actors in Euthanasia, such as Karl Brandt and Viktor Brack, were sentenced to death in the Nuremberg process. Nevertheless, many participants remained unpunished. The historical processing of these crimes is lengthy and is continued to this day.

The social examination of the legacy of National Socialism, in particular with regard to psychiatry, is important for both the scientific community and the general public. The lecture series of the University of Heidelberg is an important step in this argument by critically reflecting on the role of psychiatry in National Socialism and raising awareness of the victims and their fates.

Further information on this is available from the following organizations: University of Heidelberg href = "https://www.dgppn.de/schwerpunkte/psychiatrie-im-nationalalism"> dgppn and Psychiatric history .