How the Anatomische Gesellschaft Excluded Unwanted Members After

Annals of Anatomy 209 (2017) 25–36 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Annals of Anatomy jou rnal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aanat SOURCES IN TIME How the Anatomische Gesellschaft excluded unwanted members after 1945—among them Eugen Fischer and Max Clara ∗ Andreas Winkelmann Institute of Anatomy, Brandenburg Medical School, Fehrbelliner Str. 38, D-16816 Neuruppin, Germany a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: The Anatomische Gesellschaft, an international Germany-based association of anatomists, was closed down Received 29 June 2015 in 1945, after the end of the “Third Reich”. It was eventually re-founded in 1949, continuing its tradi- Received in revised form 6 June 2016 tion from its foundation in 1886, based in large part on the membership prior to 1945. Newly available Accepted 17 August 2016 archival material reveals, however, that at least six members were explicitly prevented from re-joining the society. This includes Max Clara, who was accused of plagiarism and, at least implicitly, of basing Keywords: his career on Nazi party support. It also includes Eugen Fischer, a leading anthropologist of the Nazi Anatomische Gesellschaft period, who was seen to be indirectly responsible for Nazi crimes like forced sterilisation or extermina- Denazification Anthropology tion of “anthropologically defined” groups of people. Therefore, Fischer’s honorary membership, which had already been published in the membership directory, was revoked after a heated internal debate. Wolfgang Bargmann Eugen Fischer Nevertheless, these exclusions cannot be interpreted as a self-directed “denazification” of the Anatomis- Max Clara che Gesellschaft, as political activity in line with the Nazis was not the main criterion for these exclusions. Incidentally, the archival sources also reveal that Wolfgang Bargmann, who had been elected as the first post-war secretary of the Gesellschaft in 1949, resigned from this post after only one year in office because his management of this “Fischer affair” was felt to be too autocratic. © 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction and Spann, 1999; Winkelmann and Noack, 2010). However, the society’s secretary, Heinrich von Eggeling, an ex officio board mem- When in May 1945 the Second World War and the “Third Reich” ber, had survived in what he called his “bomb asylum” in Neustadt ended, this was also the – temporary – end of the Anatomische am Rübenberge, a small town near Hannover. He had continued to Gesellschaft, the main organising body of German anatomists and conduct the correspondence of the society – as he had done since a Germany-based international scientific society, founded in 1886 1920 – and to edit its official journal, the Anatomischer Anzeiger (for historical detail, see Kühnel, 1989; Winkelmann, 2015a). While (today’s Annals of Anatomy) until its last wartime volume (no. 95) no specific legislation of the allied authorities to this effect could in 1944. He had also kept the membership directory, last published be identified for the immediate post-war years (cf. Allied Control in 1939, and had continued to accept new members, as occasion- Authority, 1945-1948), it seems clear that all scientific societies ally published in the Anatomischer Anzeiger (see below). So it was were closed in 1945/1946 (Rammer 2012, p. 370). To continue, the von Eggeling, together with other anatomists with a leading role in Anatomische Gesellschaft had to be re-founded, which eventually the former Anatomische Gesellschaft, particularly Hermann Stieve took place in 1949 (Bargmann, 1949). of Berlin and Alfred Benninghoff of Marburg, who started gather- In May 1945, the four members of the last acting board, ing information regarding the fate of previous members, nationally elected in 1938 in Leipzig, were no longer available for reviving and internationally. the Gesellschaft: Walter Vogt of Munich and Torsten Hellman of The subsequent developments and exchanges leading up to Lund/Sweden had died in 1941 and 1944, respectively, and Max the first unofficial post-war meetings of anatomists in 1946 and Clara of Munich and Eduard Pernkopf of Vienna had lost their aca- 1947 and the re-foundation of the Anatomische Gesellschaft in Bonn demic positions due to their active role under National Socialist rule in 1949 have been described based on the Benninghoff estate and had both been put in prison after the war until 1947 (Malina (Hildebrandt, 2013a). In short, Otto Veit of Cologne and Philipp Stöhr jr. of Bonn took the initiative to invite anatomists to a first unofficial post-war meeting in 1946 in Bonn. A place in the ∗ British Zone was explicitly preferred to the other three occupational Fax: +49 33913914515. E-mail address: [email protected] zones because the British military administration did not restrict http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aanat.2016.08.005 0940-9602/© 2016 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. 26 A. Winkelmann / Annals of Anatomy 209 (2017) 25–36 participation, while the American occupational forces would not 1945 and president of the first inofficial post-war meetings, have allowed the participation of those not yet fully “denazified” includes correspondence until 1953 (Winkelmann, 2015a,b). It is (Hildebrandt, 2013a). The same applied to the subsequent second stored at the archive of the Gesellschaft at the Institute of Anatomy meeting, also in Bonn, in 1947. Anatomists from the Soviet Zone in Erlangen, supervised by the current secretary, Prof. Friedrich could still not participate as they were not allowed to travel until Paulsen. It is organised in 45 numbered folders and sorted either 1950. by year (until 1942) or by correspondent. As von Eggeling’s corre- The eventual re-foundation of April 1949 was based to a large spondence covers all his years as secretary and the post-war years part on the previous membership. Historical material newly avail- and lacks substantial gaps, his estate is the most comprehensive able at the archive of the Anatomische Gesellschaft in Erlangen historical source on the business of the Anatomische Gesellschaft (Winkelmann, 2015b), particularly the estate (Nachlass) of Hein- during these years (for a detailed description of the estate, see rich von Eggeling and correspondence of Wolfgang Bargmann (see Winkelmann, 2015b). Letters from this estate will be quoted as, e.g. below), suggests that not every former member was welcome at “Eggeling estate/16: 6 October 1948 to Bauer”, signifying a letter this time and that some were explicitly excluded from being re- from von Eggeling to Bauer, to be found in folder 16 of the estate. admitted in 1949. This new archival material triggered the present The estate of Curt Elze (see below) is available at the analysis which will focus on these membership decisions. University Library of Würzburg (Universitätsbibliothek, Hand- At this time, around 1949, academics who had been detained schriftenabteilung: Nachlass Elze). It includes 37 numbered folders by the occupational forces after the war – like Clara and Pernkopf and additional boxes and seems to hold much of Elze’s scientific – had for the most part been freed again and the “official” post- correspondence, but remains largely unexplored (Winkelmann, war denazification process, initiated by the allied forces, had been 2015a). It was scanned for documents relevant to this analysis, but completed, mostly by classification as “cleared” or as “Mitläufer it cannot be excluded that a systematic reworking of the entire [fellow traveller]”. From today’s point of view, the allied process estate material may produce further relevant information. Letters of denazification is generally deemed a failure because a tremen- from the Elze estate are quoted in the same way, but with the prefix dous organisational effort produced little positive effect, penalised “Elze estate” before the designation of the folder or box. many ‘minor’ Nazis while many “big fish” were never held liable, In addition, the archive of the Anatomische Gesellschaft in and lead to many Germans becoming opponents of the allied bid Erlangen holds two ring binders labelled “ANAT GES 1950–1956” for democratisation (Biddiscombe, 2007). This is also true of the with relevant correspondence of Wolfgang Bargmann, one-year- medical faculties. While many professors had been temporarily secretary of the Anatomische Gesellschaft, mainly from 1950. The dismissed in 1945, shortage of alternative staff led to the speedy letters are mostly ordered according to correspondents. They are reappointment of most of them. Those “Ordinarius”-professors quoted here with “Bargmann letters” as a prefix and no folder (chairs) who remained in their positions saw no need to question numbers. If not otherwise mentioned, Bargmann is either the their own past as they often conceptualised themselves as apolitical author or the recipient. The archive also includes a binder labelled scientists not involved in the Nazi state—they were happy to return “1957–1974”, with some correspondence by Bargmann as board to the autocratic style of leadership common prior to 1933 and member or acting president from 1957 to 1961, which, however, thus opposed any democratisation of academia (Schleiermacher, was not relevant for this investigation. The correspondence of Max 2013). In many academic institutions, the percentage of former Watzka, secretary from 1950 to 1974, did not survive. It seems that Nazi party members in the 1950s was even higher than the percent- the two binders are the only “official” archival source related to age of party members before 1945, as the younger academics now the Anatomische Gesellschaft for the years 1949–1950. While these replacing older professors had been more likely to join the NSDAP documents are undoubtedly authentic, it remains unknown who (Deichmann, 2002). As Biddiscombe (2007) put it, “the ultimate arranged and preserved them or how complete they may be. In ‘denazification’ of higher education” only came with “the 1968 Stu- particular, they do not include any board meetings protocols. dent Revolt”.

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