The Forcing Out of Undesirable Doctors
From Professional Expulsion to Emigration: Dr Max Markus
The case of Max Markus from the Silesian town of Gottesberg (today Boguszów in Poland) shows that, especially with Jewish doctors, the impetus to exclude them from health insurance work often came from local colleagues—in this case the Association of Miners’ Health Insurance Physicians in Waldenburg (today Wałbrzych). On 22 September 1934, fourteen of these physicians declared that for them “a health-insurance cooperation with Dr Markus … is entirely precluded”, and they spoke against his reauthorization. It is likely that the allegations made against him (such as his purported uncooperative behaviour and his “hoarding” of prescription forms) were simply a thin veil for antisemitism. Markus did appeal his professional expulsion and tried to claim damages, but by 1936 he was already preparing for his emigration to Palestine.
Barred as a Communist: Dr Werner Schmidt
Letter from the KVD Vogtland district office in Plauen to the legal department of the KVD in Berlin, 16 May 1935, p. 3 | Historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00666
On 30 May 1933, Werner Schmidt, a general practitioner from Reichenbach, Saxony, was excluded from health-insurance work “due to communist activity”. His appeal process was granted by the Reich Labour Minister on 7 November 1933. Schmidt’s subsequent lawsuit against the Vogtland district office of the KVD, which had withheld his earnings from the health insurance system, ended in a settlement. Then on 15 May 1935, he was sentenced to fifteen months’ prison by the Plauen Regional Court for abortion and negligent homicide. After that, the KVD again barred him from working as a health-insurance doctor.
“… such a dangerous pest to the Third Reich that I would have to insist on his barring, no matter what.”
“… such a dangerous pest to the Third Reich”
On 7 April 1933, the Reich passed the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service”, which earmarked civil servants of “non-Aryan descent” for dismissal or retirement. This also applied to doctors who worked for state-run and city hospitals, university hospitals, and public health authorities.
Just two weeks later, the government passed a similar measure against general practitioners: the “Ordinance on the Permitting of Physicians to Work for Health Insurance Funds”, issued by Reich Labour Minister Franz Seldte on 22 April 1933, decreed the termination of “work by health-insurance physicians of non-Aryan descent, as well as health-insurance physicians who have acted in the interests of communism”. The main actors ensuring the policy’s strict implementation were the statutory health insurance physician associations. In filling the now vacant positions, preference was given to young doctors who were members or supporters of the Nazi Party.