DE

The Murder of Patients

Vilified as an Artist, Murdered as “Unworthy of Life”: Paul Goesch

Paul Goesch, mural (fantasy triumphal gate), between 1917 and 1919, 45.8 × 57.6 cm | <span class=prov>© Prinzhorn Collection at Heidelberg University Hospital, Inv. No. 870</span>
Paul Goesch, mural (fantasy triumphal gate), between 1917 and 1919, 45.8 × 57.6 cm | © Prinzhorn Collection at Heidelberg University Hospital, Inv. No. 870

Paul Goesch (1885–1940) began making art at a young age. His artwork for a gymnasium in Dresden’s Laubegast district, done around 1908/09, is believed to be the first expressionist mural in Germany. Completing his architectural degree in 1914, he worked as a government architect from 1915 to 1917 in Kulm (today Chełmno), where he suffered a severe psychological crisis. After the First World War, he became part of the expressionist art scene in Berlin.

Starting in 1909, Goesch repeatedly undertook longer stays in sanatoriums and psychiatric hospitals, interspersed with periods of independent living. In 1921, he was admitted to a psychiatric facility in Göttingen, where he continued his artistic work. The Nazis vilified his art as “degenerate”. In 1934, his doctors transferred him to the Teupitz Sanatorium near Berlin. In August 1940, he was murdered in the gas chamber of the killing facility in Brandenburg an der Havel
as an allegedly incurable patient. Paul Goesch’s artistic legacy includes over 1,200 sketches, drawings, and watercolours.

Letter from the Regional Office for Hereditary Biology, Görden Hospital in Brandenburg, signed Dr Hans Heinze, to the local police authority in Neuzelle, 19 February 1940. By the end of 1939, this office had already created “kinship files” for nearly 1,800 individuals. | <span class=prov>Brandenburg State Archives, Golm, 41 Neuzelle 20</span>
Letter from the Regional Office for Hereditary Biology, Görden Hospital in Brandenburg, signed Dr Hans Heinze, to the local police authority in Neuzelle, 19 February 1940. By the end of 1939, this office had already created “kinship files” for nearly 1,800 individuals. | Brandenburg State Archives, Golm, 41 Neuzelle 20
Paul Goesch, untitled, between 1917 and 1919, 16.6 × 20.6 cm | <span class=prov>© Prinzhorn Collection at Heidelberg University Hospital, Inv. No. 893</span>
Paul Goesch, untitled, between 1917 and 1919, 16.6 × 20.6 cm | © Prinzhorn Collection at Heidelberg University Hospital, Inv. No. 893

“Operation T4”: Code Name for Mass Murder

In October 1939, Adolf Hitler tasked Dr Karl Brandt (his official personal physician) and Philipp Bouhler (head of the Chancellery of the Führer, or KdF) with creating the Nazi regime’s first systematic programme of mass murder. They were to organize the killing of people with illnesses and/or disabilities. To do so, the KdF established the “T4” organization, which was code-named after its office address at Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin. It operated six killing sites with gas chambers: Brandenburg an der Havel, Grafeneck, Bernburg, Hadamar, Sonnenstein (Saxony), and Hartheim (Austria). The first lethal gassings of psychiatric patients had already taken place on 15 October 1939 in Posen (today Poznań), which had just come under German occupation.

The individuals affected by the T4 programme were mostly people with severe disabilities or illnesses who could expect a long institutionalization and thus were considered “unworthy of life”. Their details were recorded on a registration form, with medical “assessors” and “chief assessors” subsequently deciding on their life or death. More than forty doctors participated in these assessments. The T4 programme was suspended in August 1941: its total number of victims is estimated at more than 70,000.

all banners