Website for the Exhibition

Systemic Disorder

Doctors and Patients in Nazi Germany

The Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933 led to profound changes in all areas of society—including the healthcare system. By presenting individual case studies, the exhibition “Systemic Disorder: Doctors and Patients in Nazi Germany” demonstrates how life’s possibilities were radically transformed, especially for Jewish doctors and patients. It highlights the trajectory of individual careers, and how new tasks—and new areas of conflict—arose in the healthcare sector. How was the “forced” conformity of the medical profession’s organizations also by acquiescence? What happened to the Reich’s Jewish and “politically undesirable” physicians? What kind of medical care did civilian and military prisoners receive at concentration camps? And how did doctors and healthcare policymakers try to maintain health services for the German populace until the end of the war?

The exhibition outlines the crimes committed by doctors in the name of medicine: forced sterilizations, involuntary “euthanasia”, and human experimentation. But it also looks at lesser-researched areas, such as the undermining of medical confidentiality under the Nazi regime, and the work of the German Doctors’ Court in Munich.