Gleichschaltung and “de-Jewification” in German university neurology departments

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-230
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Zeidman
Keyword(s):  
Brain Tissue ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Racial Hygiene ◽  
Forced Sterilization ◽  
Nazi Ideology ◽  
The University ◽  
German Cities

In at least 26 instances of “non-Aryan” neuroscientist dismissal, their replacements were involved in racial hygiene consequences such as aiding the vehement forced sterilization program, euthanasia of neuropsychiatric patients, or collection of brain tissue and research on these expendable victims. The hardest-hit departments were in the major German cities, especially Berlin, where both the university and multiple smaller hospitals and institutes were decapitated and where Jews had been directors prior to the Nazi power seizure. University neurology departments in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Bonn, Heidelberg, and Breslau were also heavily incapacitated by dismissals. Those who took over the positions of dismissed neuroscientists were often members of not only the Nazi party, but multiple subsidiary agencies, such as the SS, SA, and others, likely reflecting deeper commitment to Nazi ideology. Six known “Aryan” neuroscientists emigrated from Germany, reflecting the fact that support of the regime was neither mandatory, nor the only solution.

scholarly journals Stigma management and justifications of the self in denazification accounts

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Detzen ◽  
Sebastian Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
German Society ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Nazi Ideology ◽  
Past Behavior ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
University Archives ◽  
Post War ◽  
The University

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study how two accounting professors at a German university dealt with their denazification, a process carried out by the Allied Forces following the Second World War to free German society from Nazi ideology. It is argued that the professors carried a stigma due to their affiliation with a university that had been aligned with the Nazi state apparatus. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses Goffman’s work on “Stigma” (1963/1986) and “Frame Analysis” (1974/1986) to explore how the professors aimed to dismiss any link with the Nazi regime. Primary sources from the university archives were accessed with a particular focus on the professors’ post-war justification accounts. Findings The paper shows how the professors created a particular frame, which they supported by downplaying frame breaks, primarily their Nazi party memberships. Instead, they were preoccupied with what Goffman (1974/1986) terms “the vulnerability of experience,” exploiting that their past behavior requires context and is thus open to interpretation. The professors themselves provide this guidance to readers, which is a strategy that we call “authoring” of past information. Originality/value The paper shows how “counter accounts” can be constructed by assigning roles and powers to characters therein and by providing context and interpreting behavior on behalf of the readers. It is suggested that this “authoring” of past information is successful only on the surface. A closer examination unveils ambiguity, making this strategy risky and fragile.

Setting the stage for mass murder and human experimentation

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-138
Author(s):  
Lawrence A. Zeidman
Keyword(s):  
Mass Murder ◽  
Human Experimentation ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Racial Hygiene

With Hitler’s 1933 power seizure, the fate of roughly 9000 political and racial “enemy” neuroscientists was sealed. In the “Gleichschaltung,” or coordination of German neuroscience, step-wise legal and professional sanctions occurred against “non-Aryan” neuroscientists at every university neurology department in Germany. These were either dismissed within the first months of the Nazi takeover or by the passage of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. Sometimes the dismissed neuroscientists were forcibly removed by colleagues and sometimes they were arrested and imprisoned for trumped-up charges. Even private neurologists were forbidden from seeing insurance panel patients. Half of all German doctors joined the Nazi party, eager to take the positions vacated by their Jewish and communist comrades. The German neurology and psychiatry societies were merged to facilitate Gleichschaltung and Nazi influence on the specialties. And flourishing research and clinical programs were halted and then replaced by the racial hygiene agenda of the Nazi state.

scholarly journals Edith Bülbring, 27 December 1903 - 5 July 1990

1992 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 67-95 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Smooth Muscle ◽  
Smooth Muscles ◽  
Gold Medal ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Hospital Physician ◽  
Smooth Muscle Function ◽  
Pharmaceutical Society ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Scientific Skills ◽  
The University

Edith Bülbring was born on 27 December 1903 in Bonn. Her father, Dr Karl Bülbring, was German and Professor of English at the University of Bonn. Her mother, Hortense Leonore Bülbring ( née Kann), was Dutch and the daughter of a Jewish banker’s family in The Hague. Edith was educated in Bonn and entered university to study medicine at Bonn University in 1928. Afterwards she worked with the pharmocologist Paul Trendelenbury in Berlin and as a hospital physician in Jena. She left Germany in 1933 along with many others owing to the rise of the Nazi party. She began work in England with J.H. Burn at the Pharmaceutical Society in London and moved with him to Oxford in 1937 where she remained for the rest of her life. She worked at the Department of Pharmacology Oxford until her retirement and was successively Demonstrator and Lecturer. Reader and finally Professor. She died in 1990 at the age of 86. Edith Bülbring was distinguished both as a pharmacologist and as a smooth-muscle physiologist. Under her influence the study of smooth muscles first became recognised area of scientific enquiry, and then increasingly important. She will undoubtedly be remembered as the world’s most influential scientist in this field. The techniques developed in her laboratory led to increasing knowledge of smooth muscle function and transmitter action. Her influence and scientific skills were recognized by her election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, by the conferment of honourary degrees from the universities of Groningen, Leuven and Homburg Saar, and the award to her of the Schmiedeberg-Plakette of the Deutsche Pharmakologische Gesellschaft and of the Wellcome Gold Medal in Pharmacology.

George L. Mosse 1919–1999: An Appreciation

1999 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-336
Author(s):  
Anson Rabinbach
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Chemical Company ◽  
Nazi Ideology ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
German Ideology ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The University

I first met George Mosse in late August 1967. That summer I carried my worn copy of his book on the roots of Nazi ideology, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (1964), with Hubert Lanzinger's bizarre painting of Hider as a German knight on the cover, to Salzburg where I studied German before going on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. Though I admired the book, it did not prepare me for meeting the man. In 1967 I drove out to the Midwest from New York in my VW bug. To my surprise, as soon as I arrived in Madison, someone pointed him out, sitting on the Terrace of the Wisconsin Memorial Union in his short sleeve shirt, smoking his pipe, and arguing intensely with a group of students who were planning to sit in to block the Dow Chemical Company campus recruiter in the Fall (Dow was chosen because the company was manufacturing napalm).

scholarly journals The enemy, his gestalt of animal (Schmitt’s and Hegel’s animal functions)

2003 ◽  
pp. 213-230
Author(s):  
Petar Bojanic
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Legal Scholar ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
University Of Berlin ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
The University

The main cause of Schmitt?s and Koj?ve?s friendship, and consequently, their correspondence, lies in their common affinity for philosophy of Hegel. When they began corresponding in 1955, Schmitt was something of an academic pariah; in 1933, the legal scholar had joined the Nazi Party, publicly declared his anti-Semitism, was later interrogated (but not charged) at Nuremberg, and retired from his post at the University of Berlin in 1946. After his famous lectures on Hegel?s Phenomenology ended in 1939, Koj?ve joined the Resistance. At the end of the World II War, he wound up in the French ministry of economic affairs, where he worked until his death in 1968. This text is written on the margins of two letters, one written on 14.XII.1955. by Schmitt and the other, Koj?ve?s answer, dated on 4.I.1956. The subject of those two letters is the interpretation of the enemy in philosophy of Hegel. .

scholarly journals The Dispute Over the Reform Pedagogue Peter Petersen (1884-1952) in Jena 2010: Review of a "Total Disaster" After Ten Years

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hein Retter
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Community School ◽  
Disabled Children ◽  
Training School ◽  
Nazi Ideology ◽  
Reform Pedagogy ◽  
International Attention ◽  
The University ◽  
The City ◽  
Looking Back

With the reunification of Germany, a Jenaplan School was founded in 1991 in the city of Jena,Thuringia. Since then one place of the city carried Petersen's name. The University School at Jena, refounded by Petersen as Life Community School in 1924 (the traditional purpose as a mere teacher training school goes back to the year 1844) and received international attention during the Weimar Republic. Petersen's attempt to gain recognition in the Hitler state (1933-1945) with his reform pedagogy failed, but the University School was allowed to continue to exist. In 1950 it was closed by the socialist GDR state (East Germany). Ten years ago, a bitter dispute raged in Jena over Petersen because previously unknown racist texts written by him had been discovered. The dispute ended when Petersenplatz was renamed "Jenaplan". A book by Hein Retter, which appeared ten years ago, was highly controversial: it described children of Jewish and socialist origin as well as disabled children - from families who were threatened by Nazi ideology but who saw their children safe with Petersen. Looking back ten years, the author of the controversial book describes the Jena Petersen dispute and what can be learned from it.

P2-055: Overcoming recruitment challenges for brain tissue donation: The University of Wisconsin, Madison Alzheimer's Disease Brain Bank

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (4S_Part_9) ◽  
pp. P278-P278
Author(s):  
Kara M. Erwin ◽  
Whitney Wharton ◽  
Tamara Markgraf ◽  
M. Shahriar Salamat ◽  
Cindy Carlsson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Brain Tissue ◽  
Tissue Donation ◽  
Brain Bank ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
Recruitment Challenges ◽  
The University
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