The Weight of the Word

The Weight of the Word. medical eponyms and the nazi era

a project by Piero Martinello and Piero Casentini

curated by Massimiliano Tommaso Rezza

Abstract: What’s in a name? In medicine, an eponym is a disorder or a syndrome named after the individual who originally isolated and described it. Eponyms are extremely common in medicine, and it is a great honour for physicians to have their name linked to that of a medical condition. To this day, tens of eponyms perpetuate the memory of doctors who operated under the Nazi regime.

An exploratory archival essay examines those medical eponyms drawing source from Nazism’s doctors and medical personnels’ experiments; conducted both before and during the Third Reich. Controversy now rages within the international medical community regarding the preservation of such Nazi-era derived eponyms. Encompassing archival photographs of Nazi-era doctors, and their eponymous diseases, histological images and anatomic illustrations, we interrogate numerous dialogues concerning medical objectivity, power, and the complex morality of source knowledge, and application.

The topic was the object of an international conference organised by La Sapienza University, the Jewish Community in Rome and the Israelite Hospital of Rome in June 2015. The meeting brought together historians, physicians and personalities from the Jewish community to discuss the topic of eponyms in medicine. It resulted in the launch of an international campaign calling for the withdrawal of the eponyms linked with Nazi doctors from the scientific vocabulary, through a petition at the European Court of Human Rights.

-------

"Should Reiter’s name, then, be expunged from medical history, except of course in citations to previous literature? It would seem that both those who wish to retain Reiter’ s eponym and those who wish to eliminate it share a common desire: they want Reiter himself to fade into oblivion. But the Hippocratic oath does not prescribe oblivion for those who do harm. It mandates condemnation, shame, and obloquy.

We should remember Reiter and the evil he furthered; indeed, we dare not forget it, for racial, social, and judicial dehumanization are still very much with us.

Fortunately, he himself has provided the means to perpetuate his memory according to its deserts. Let Reiter’ s syndrome serve henceforth not as a description of reactive arthritis but of the temptation to evil that occurs when any of us forgets that the only irreducible subject of history is every man, woman, or child in his or her uniqueness and value, and that the sworn task of the physician, as the moral obligation of us all, is to do no harm. Let it fade from the literature of arthritis but be remembered in the textbooks of medical ethics, and let it live there, forever, in infamy."

Robert Zaller, Hans Reiter and the Politics of Remembrance

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

German anatomist Max Clara (1899–1966) described the ‘‘Clara cell’’ of the bronchiolar epithelium in 1937. Clara was appointed as Chair of Anatomy at Leipzig University in 1935. He owed his career, at least in part, to Nazi support. He was an active member of the Nazi party and engaged in university politics; this included making anti-Semitic statements about other academics in appointment procedures. Nevertheless, he also supported prosecuted colleagues. Much of Clara’s histological research in Leipzig, including his original description of the bronchial epithelium, was based on tissue taken from prisoners executed in nearby Dresden. Max Clara was an active and outspoken Nazi and his histological research exploited the rising number of executions during the Nazi period. Clara’s discovery is thus linked to the Nazi system.

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

Ibrahim (1877–1952), an Egyptian pediatrician, completed his pediatric studies in 1905 in Berlin and was later appointed professor of pediatrics. He specialized in gastrointestinal diseases in newborns and central nervous system disorders in children. Until recently Ibrahim’s name was attached to the clinic for child and adolescent medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, the “Kinderklinik Jussuf Ibrahim.” After the war, a commission investigating his activities concluded that Dr. Ibrahim supported the Nazi euthanasia program. It reported that from 1941 he took an active part in the killing of sick and mentally ill children, defined by the Nazis as “unworthy life.” While his name is no longer associated with the children’s clinic in Jena, the international medical community has been slower to integrate these revelations and his name continues to denote a newborn skin disease (Beck-Ibrahim disease).

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

Ibrahim (1877–1952), an Egyptian pediatrician, completed his pediatric studies in 1905 in Berlin and was later appointed professor of pediatrics. He specialized in gastrointestinal diseases in newborns and central nervous system disorders in children. Until recently Ibrahim’s name was attached to the clinic for child and adolescent medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, the “Kinderklinik Jussuf Ibrahim.” After the war, a commission investigating his activities concluded that Dr. Ibrahim supported the Nazi euthanasia program. It reported that from 1941 he took an active part in the killing of sick and mentally ill children, defined by the Nazis as “unworthy life.” While his name is no longer associated with the children’s clinic in Jena, the international medical community has been slower to integrate these revelations and his name continues to denote a newborn skin disease (Beck-Ibrahim disease).

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

Eduard Pernkopf (1888–1955) was appointed professor of anatomy at the University of Vienna in 1928. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and the “brown shirts” the following year. After Hitler invaded Austria in 1938 he was appointed dean of the medical school at the University of Vienna. Pernkopf was a major instigator of the purging of Jewish staff from the medical school (153 of its 197 faculty members, including three Nobel laureates). In several of his public speeches he voiced support for both euthanasia and the Holocaust that was yet to come. During this period as dean until 1943, he undertook the writing of his famous anatomy atlas which mapped the human body in superb detail and which many hailed as “one of the most important anatomic atlases since the work of Vesalius.” In order to carry out this monumental work, Pernkopf organized for the bodies of over a thousand people executed by the Gestapo to serve as models for the atlas drawings. A photograph of Pernkopf appeared in the New York Times on 26 November 1938; dressed in Nazi uniform, he is standing under a portrait of Hitler and addressing the faculty from which he purged its Jewish members. The illustrators of the atlas were also active Nazi party members who incorporated small swastikas and SS insignia into their signatures. These were airbrushed out of the later edition. Pernkopf was never charged with war crimes.

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

Hans Reiter, a German bacteriologist and hygienist (1881–1969), completed postgraduate studies at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. Reiter was a fervent supporter of the Nazis; he joined the Nazi party as early as 1932 and was an avid disciple of Hitler’s doctrines. This political involvement benefited his career and in 1933 he was made department director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Experimental Therapy in Berlin-Dahlem. In 1936 he was appointed director of the health department of the state of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He continued to encourage the fanatical teaching of racial hygiene in universities. In spite of his wholehearted Nazi leanings, Reiter was awarded several international honors, one of which was being designated a corresponding member of The Royal Society of Medicine in London. He continued to lecture on the international conference circuit without any harassment until his death in 1969. Several eponyms exist in his name.

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

Stoeckel, an internationally acclaimed German gynecologist and obstetrician (1871–1961), served as professor and chair of the Berlin Charite Hospital’s department of gynecology for approximately 25 years. Stoeckel was very sympathetic to Nazi causes and, except on rare occasions, did not assist his Jewish colleagues when discriminated against (including dismissal). Stoeckel served as president of the German Society of Gynecology in 1933–34. He cooperated with the Nazis and was responsible for the expulsion of Jewish doctors from the Society. The most famous of them was Dr. Bernhard Zondek (1891–1966), who was dismissed after Hitler came to power in 1933 with Stoeckel’s alleged collusion and without any protection extended by Stoeckel. To his credit however, one case has been reported, that of Robert Meyer (1864–1947) whose occupational status Stoeckel did maintain until 1939. Along with other German gynecologists, Stoekel supported Hitler, and in a joint effort of solidarity sent Hitler their “enthusiastic admiration” in a telegram. Stoeckel was very well known by the Nazi regime and he delivered one of Magda Goebbels’ (wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels) six children. After the war he continued to practice, and rebuilt the destroyed clinic where he previously worked. At various points in his career he served as president of national professional medical organizations and published extensively. He was a pioneer in the development of regional anesthesia in childbirth and became the most prominent German gynecologist of his time. Medical eponyms honoring his name include the Goebell-Stoeckel-Frangenheim, the Schauta-Stoeckel, and Stoeckels’s operations.

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

Stoeckel, an internationally acclaimed German gynecologist and obstetrician (1871–1961), served as professor and chair of the Berlin Charite Hospital’s department of gynecology for approximately 25 years. Stoeckel was very sympathetic to Nazi causes and, except on rare occasions, did not assist his Jewish colleagues when discriminated against (including dismissal). Stoeckel served as president of the German Society of Gynecology in 1933–34. He cooperated with the Nazis and was responsible for the expulsion of Jewish doctors from the Society. The most famous of them was Dr. Bernhard Zondek (1891–1966), who was dismissed after Hitler came to power in 1933 with Stoeckel’s alleged collusion and without any protection extended by Stoeckel. To his credit however, one case has been reported, that of Robert Meyer (1864–1947) whose occupational status Stoeckel did maintain until 1939. Along with other German gynecologists, Stoekel supported Hitler, and in a joint effort of solidarity sent Hitler their “enthusiastic admiration” in a telegram. Stoeckel was very well known by the Nazi regime and he delivered one of Magda Goebbels’ (wife of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels) six children. After the war he continued to practice, and rebuilt the destroyed clinic where he previously worked. At various points in his career he served as president of national professional medical organizations and published extensively. He was a pioneer in the development of regional anesthesia in childbirth and became the most prominent German gynecologist of his time. Medical eponyms honoring his name include the Goebell-Stoeckel-Frangenheim, the Schauta-Stoeckel, and Stoeckels’s operations.

© Piero Martinello & Piero Casentini - Image from the The Weight of the Word photography project
i

The German pathologist Friedrich Wegener (1907–90) was a dedicated Nazi. In 1932, even before Hitler came to power, he joined the Sturmabteilung (brown shirts), and the Nazi party a year later. In 1938 he was promoted to the equivalent rank of lieutenant colonel. While no firm proof exists, it is suspected that in his capacity as pathologist in the Lodz ghetto, Wegener may have been involved in atrocities at that site related to research. After the war he was suspected of being a war criminal and was imprisoned. However, he never stood trial and continued to work for many years. The term Wegener’s granulomatosis remains in common use.

Sign up to our weekly newsletter

Stay in the loop