Medical research and national socialist euthanasia: Carl Schneider and the heidelberg research children from 1942 until 1945

Abstract

Neuropathological and pathological-anatomical research was conducted on the victims of National Socialist “euthanasia” after they had been murdered. The victims’ brains in particular were used for research purposes. Furthermore, the operational headquarters for the organization of the “euthanasia” program at number 4 Tiergartenstrasse (T4 head office) maintained two research departments: one in Brandenburg-Görden and one in Heidelberg, in which children, adolescents, and young adults were subjected to a comprehensive clinical, psychological, and hereditary examination program before being murdered. This chapter deals with the Heidelberg-Wiesloch research department under the direction of Heidelberg professor of psychiatry Carl Schneider. He opportunistically chose to examine the “problems of idiocy and epilepsy” by correlating clinical, radiographical, and psychological testing research results selectively and quickly with postmortem examinations of the brains of murdered victims. Of the 52 children and adolescents examined in the Heidelberg hospital, 21 were murdered in the pediatric department of the Eichberg state asylum so that their brains could be examined in Heidelberg. Since 1998, a memorial in front of the Heidelberg Hospital reminds us of the murdered children and adolescents.