Medicine under National Socialism has been a focus of systematic research since the 1980s. One aspect that has gained more interest during the past few years is how medical societies were intertwined with the Nazi regime. Studies on German associations of surgeons, anatomists, psychiatrists or neurologists, just to name a few, have recently been completed or are still ongoing. We can now add urologists to that list, specialists who deal with surgical and medical diseases of the male and female urinary tract and the male reproductive organs.
But medical historian Matthis Krischel’s doctoral dissertation entitled Urology and National Socialism is of interest to a broader audience than the first impression of the main title suggests. His major point is that urologists and politicians exchanged favours to their mutual advantages and thus were ‘resources for each other’ and that this perspective can also be useful for other research projects.
The narrative starts with a review of major trends in research about medicine under National Socialism. The historiography is up-to-date. As the author shifts from a panorama mode to his focus, it is not quite clear why he chooses to zoom in on the field of urology. Besides stating that urology was the smallest medical specialty (in 1933, only between 100 and 200 German physicians were urologists) and that it thus is manageable to conduct in-depth studies of the predominant people, he could have been more precise in the beginning of the book and explained why this particular branch ought to be highlighted in this context.
In 1933, more than one in four urologists in Germany was classified as Jewish according to the Nazi race laws. Some of them fled to other countries (preferably the United States of America, Great Britain or Palestine). Most of the remaining were murdered in concentration camps or committed suicide, as has already been described by Krischel and his co-authors in previous publications, most notably a two-volume edition from 2011.Footnote 1 One tragic example out of many is the destiny of Eugen Joseph (1879–1933), the former associate professor of urology in Berlin who committed suicide in 1933 after he had lost his clinical and teaching positions. Krischel argues convincingly that the majority of German urologists supported Nazi health and race policies, such as the persecution of colleagues, out of conviction or for opportunistic reasons, and obtained influence through university positions in return: the first German full professor in urology (Otto Ringleb (1875–1946)) was installed in 1937 at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University of Berlin. Ringleb was at that point in time also an SS-Obersturmführer.
One of this book’s many strengths is that it lays emphasis on the practice and methods of forced sterilisation and castration policies of men (operated on by surgeons or urologists), a topic that has not received as much historical attention as the sterilisation of women (operated on by gynaecologists). The German Law for Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (Das Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses) was enacted in 1933. Around 400 000 patients who had been diagnosed with certain so-called hereditary diseases were sterilised after a verdict in ‘hereditary health courts’. Similar laws existed in a number of countries. While about nine out of ten sterilisation victims were female in, for example, Switzerland and Sweden, about fifty percent of all victims who were sterilised in Germany between 1934 and 1945 were men. If the author had discussed his results on sterilised men with a European perspective, this part would have been an even more welcome addition to this growing field of study.
Krischel’s book relies on primary published materials such as research papers, discussions in medical journals from the 1930s and 1940s and instruction materials in textbooks, as well as archival documents from different state and university archives, practitioners’ personal papers and company archives. The author could have provided more detailed insight on some personal files. There is a hint that some files have been destroyed for political reasons (p. 53), but he could have elaborated further on this matter. The book is well structured and it is fully illustrated with pictures, tables and reprints from contemporary journals and the daily press. An index would have been helpful for readers who are interested in certain urologists or politicians.
The particular strength of Matthis Krischel’s thesis results from mobilising and drawing together methods, theories and approaches from different fields of inquiry related to the history of medicine in the ‘Third Reich’. The reconstruction of the relationship between German urology societies and the National Socialist regime and how German urologists have dealt with their past gives us a multifaceted picture that is relevant to the history of science. Krischel’s remarkable contribution unravels institutional and personal continuities and will be valued by various audiences such as historians, physicians and educated laymen. It will also be a book well worth reading for courses on medicine in the ‘Third Reich’.
