Hans Eppinger

Last updated • 3 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Eppinger HansEppingerImage.jpg
Eppinger

Hans Eppinger Jr. (5 January 1879, in Prague, Royal Bohemia, Austria-Hungary – 25 September 1946, in Vienna) was an Austrian physician of part-Jewish descent who performed experiments upon Nazi concentration camp prisoners.

Contents

Early years

Hans Eppinger was born in Prague, the son of the physician Professor Hans Eppinger [Sr] [1848–1916] [1] a son of Heinrich Eppinger (1813–1868), notary and chancellery director in the monastery of Braunau (Broumov) in Bohemia and his wife Aloisia Salomon. [2] Hans Eppinger Sr married Georgine Zetter in Klagenfurt and had two daughters and a son, Hans Eppinger junior. Hans Eppinger Jr received an education in Graz and Strasbourg. In 1903, he became a medical doctor in Graz, working at a medical clinic. He moved to Vienna in 1908, and in 1909 he specialized in internal medicine, particularly conditions of the liver. He became a professor in 1918, then taught in Freiburg in 1926 and in Cologne in 1930.

In 1936 he is known to have travelled to Moscow to treat Joseph Stalin. A year later he was called to treat Queen Marie of Romania.

Eppinger had been a "member of the NSDAP in a leading position" since September 1937. In the weeks before the Anschluss, Eppinger's house served as a quarter for the "Nazi student cells" at the University of Vienna, no different from that of the Viennese professors Wilhelm Falta and Hans Spitzy. On 28 May he formally applied for admission to the NSDAP and was admitted retroactively to 1 May (membership number 6,164,614). His assistant and senior physicians were "almost without exception" SS and SA officers. When he learned that, contrary to his expectations, he was not intended to be chairman of the Internist Congress meeting in Vienna, he protested to the NSDÄB. This is not acceptable, after all, he is a "full Aryan".

Experiments at Dachau

Heinrich Himmler (front right, beside prisoner) inspecting Dachau Concentration Camp on 8 May 1936. Bundesarchiv Bild 152-11-12, Dachau, Konzentrationslager, Besuch Himmlers.jpg
Heinrich Himmler (front right, beside prisoner) inspecting Dachau Concentration Camp on 8 May 1936.

As a result of his experiments on concentration camp prisoners at Dachau, he gained a notoriety during World War II. Along with professor Wilhelm Beiglböck  [ de ], he performed tests on 90 Romani prisoners by providing them sea water as their only source of fluids. (In some cases the taste of the water was disguised to hide the saline content.) The prisoners suffered from severe dehydration, and witnesses reported that they had been seen licking the floors they had mopped in an attempt to hydrate themselves. The goal of the experiment was to determine if the prisoners would suffer severe physical symptoms or death within a period of 6–12 days. [3]

Capture and suicide

Eppinger, 67, committed suicide after the war, reportedly using poison. This occurred a month before he was to be called to testify at the Nuremberg Trials. Much later it was discovered that he had an unclaimed Swiss bank account.

Eponymous medical terms

The following medical terms were named after Eppinger:

From 1973, the Falk Foundation of Freiburg awarded an Eppinger Prize for outstanding contributions to liver research. However, when Eppinger's activities at Dachau were brought to public attention in 1984, the prize was cancelled. [4] [5]

In 1976, the lunar crater 'Euclides D' was renamed by the IAU to honor Hans Eppinger. However, in 2002, after Eppinger's association with Nazi prison camps had been brought to the attention of the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature by the Lunar Republic Society, [6] the name was dropped. As of July 2009, the crater is once again officially listed as Euclides D. [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Euclides (crater)</span> Crater on the Moon

Euclides is a small lunar impact crater located near the eastern edge of Oceanus Procellarum, about 30 kilometers to the west of the Montes Riphaeus mountains. The mare in the vicinity is devoid of significant craters, but to the west is an area of low rises. The crater is named after the Greek mathematician Euclid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Leisner</span> German Roman Catholic priest

Karl Leisner was a Roman Catholic priest interned in the Dachau concentration camp. He died of tuberculosis shortly after being liberated by the Allied forces. He has been declared a martyr and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 23 June 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Fischer</span> German chemist (1881–1945)

Hans Fischer was a German organic chemist and the recipient of the 1930 Nobel Prize for Chemistry "for his researches into the constitution of haemin and chlorophyll and especially for his synthesis of haemin."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adolf Pokorny</span> Austrian-born dermatologist and doctor; defendant in the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg (1895-?)

Adolf Pokorny was an Austrian dermatologist and aspiring Nazi. In the 1947 Doctors' Trial he was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity for involuntary sterilization experiments on concentration camp prisoners, but he was acquitted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelm Beiglböck</span>

Wilhelm Franz Josef Beiglböck was an internist Nazi physician and held the title of Consulting Physician to the German Luftwaffe (Airforce) during World War II. In the 1947 Doctors' Trial, he was tried and convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for conducting human experimentation involving seawater on prisoners at Dachau concentration camp; he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, but his sentence was commuted to 10 years and he was released in 1951. He was found dead in a stairwell in 1963.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karl Gebhardt</span> German physician, war criminal, SS-Gruppenführer

Karl Franz Gebhardt was a Nazi physician and a war criminal. Gebhardt was the main coordinator of a series of medical atrocities performed on inmates of the concentration camps at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz. These experiments were an attempt to defend his approach to the surgical management of grossly contaminated traumatic wounds, against the then-new innovations of antibiotic treatment of injuries acquired on the battlefield.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horst Schumann</span> Nazi SS doctor at Auschwitz (1906–1983)

Horst Schumann was an SS-Sturmbannführer (major) and medical doctor who conducted sterilization and castration experiments at Auschwitz and was particularly interested in the mass sterilization of Jews by means of X-rays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Münch</span> German physician

Hans Wilhelm Münch, also known as The Good Man of Auschwitz, was a German Nazi Party member who worked as an SS physician during World War II at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1943 to 1945 in German occupied Poland. He was acquitted of war crimes at a 1947 trial in Kraków.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hubertus Strughold</span> German-born American psychologist (1898 - 1986)

Hubertus Strughold was a German-born physiologist, and medical researcher. Beginning in 1935 he served as chief of aeromedical research for Hermann Göring's Ministry of Aviation and later held the same position with the German Luftwaffe throughout World War II. In 1947 he was brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip and went on to serve in a number of high-level scientific posts with the US Air Force and NASA.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nazi human experimentation</span> Unethical experiments on human subjects

Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on prisoners by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps mainly between 1942 and 1945. There were 15,754 documented victims, of various nationalities and age groups, although the true number is believed to be more extensive. Many survived, with a quarter of documented victims being killed. Survivors generally experienced severe permanent injuries.

Kurt Friedrich Plötner was a Nazi Party member and medical doctor who conducted human experimentation on Jews and Soviet prisoners of war in German concentration camps. American intelligence recruited him to work for the United States in 1945. He returned to the medical field as a professor at the University of Freiburg in West Germany after working for the United States and living under an alias.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wilhelm Pfannenstiel</span> German physician and SS-Standartenführer (1890–1982)

Wilhelm Hermann Pfannenstiel was a German physician, member of the Nazi Party from 1933,, and SS officer from 1934,. In August 1942 he witnessed, together with Kurt Gerstein, the gassing of Jews in Bełżec extermination camp. He may also share responsibility with other SS officials in criminal medical experimentations on unwilling and uninformed human beings, mainly Jews prisoners in Dachau concentration camp.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Popper</span> Austrian physician (1903–1988)

Hans Popper was an Austrian-born pathologist, hepatologist and teacher. Together with Dame Sheila Sherlock, he is widely regarded as the founding father of hepatology. He is the namesake of the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society, as well as the International Hans Popper Award and the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society.

Bruno Nikolaus Maria Weber was a German physician, bacteriologist and Hauptsturmführer (1944), at Auschwitz, in the branch of the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen SS. He was chief of the Hygienic Institute. He organized experiments involving the interaction of different human blood types in unwilling prisoner-patients. He also conducted experiments using barbiturates and morphine derivatives for mind-control purposes. He was made Obersturmführer der reserve on the 20th of April, 1943, SS-Sanitatsamt, and given the SS number 420759.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hans Eisele (physician)</span>

Hans Kurt Eisele was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer and concentration camp doctor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horst Böhme (SS officer)</span> German SS officer

Horst Böhme was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He served in the SD, the intelligence service of the SS, and was a leading perpetrator of the Holocaust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernst Holzlöhner</span> German physiologist

Ernst Holzlöhner was a German physiologist, university lecturer, and Nazi involved in the Nazi experiments on humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karel Sperber</span> Surgeon imprisoned in Auschwitz who testified on Nazi medical experiments at the Nuremberg Trials

Karel Sperber OBE (1910–1957) was a Jewish Czechoslovak surgeon who travelled to England after the Nazi invasion of his country, but unable to practice medicine because he was an alien, took a job as a ship's doctor instead and was captured by Axis forces when his ship was sunk by the Germans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andreas Ludwig Jeitteles</span>

Andreas Ludwig Joseph Heinrich Jeitteles or, in Czech, Ondřej Ludvík Jeitteles was a Czech physician, author of medical literature, journalist, politician, poet and writer; under the pseudonym, Justus Frey.

Helmuth Vetter was an SS-Hauptsturmführer and a Nazi war criminal.

References

  1. A brother of Hans Eppinger Sr was Carl Eppinger (1853–1911), leader of the German liberals in the Bohemian Landtag, married to Anna Marterer (1851–1925),]
  2. Blumenthal, Ralph (11 November 1984). "A Dispute Erupts on Medical Prize". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 January 2022. Hans Eppinger Jr paternal grandmother was a Jew from Prague which made him a person not Jewish but of Jewish Descent
  3. Straus, Eugene (2000-01-07). Rosalyn Yalow, Nobel Laureate. Basic Books. ISBN   9780738202631 via google.ca.[ permanent dead link ]
  4. Blumenthal, Ralph (11 November 1984). "A DISPUTE ERUPTS ON MEDICAL PRIZE (Published 1984)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2023-07-07.
  5. New York Times November 16, 1984 "German Medical Prize Canceled Over Nazi Link"
  6. "Luna Society International - Official Website Of The Moon Society". lunargeographic.com.
  7. "LISTSERV 16.0 - Login Required". wvu.edu.