The exclusion of "non-Aryan" scientists: universities, clinics and professional organizations

Abstract

With the implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (1933), including the Third Implementation Decree (1934), the Regulation for Obtaining aTeaching License (1934) and the Law for the Dismissal and Transfer of University Teachers (1935), the National Socialist (NS) government created legislative instruments to ban university staff (from lecturers to full professors) labelled as Jewish or considered politically unwanted from teaching and research. Whereas around 20% of the staff at the universities were affected by these measures after 1933, at various medical faculties the figures reached 30-40% and at neurological departments and institutes sometimes up to 90%. Student Nazi activists played asignificant role in expelling faculty members from office. As beneficiaries of the expulsions, young doctors often improved their career prospects and established professors remained silent out of political conviction, opportunism or fear. A(self) coordination (Gleichschaltung) with immediate or gradual exclusion of "non-Aryan" members and boards is documented for numerous medical organizations and associations (e.g. Deutscher Ärztevereinsbund, Hartmannbund, German Medical Women's Association, Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians) as well as for scientific academies (e.g. Leopoldina) and research societies (Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, German Research Foundation). The NS-loyal Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists, which had been founded in 1935, tolerated "Jewish" members until 1938. As awhole, the picture that emerged from everyday medical (and neurological) practice is one of drastic changes that massively affected not only the lives of many doctors but also the moral standards in terms of patient care, teaching, research and collegiality.