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“… when doctors become judges”

ULRICH PREHN

The “KVD under National Socialism” research project and the “Systemic Disorder: Doctors and Patients in Nazi Germany” exhibition

It was in late April 1945 that the renowned Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was liberated from Kaufering VI Türkheim, a satellite of Dachau Concentration Camp. About a year later, he turned his attention to the largely ignominious role played by his profession in the twelve years (or seven years in Austria) of Nazi rule:

“When doctors become judges, who even cares? Judges over the life and death of others, or even worse: not just judges, but also executioners…”[1]

In his article on “the value of life and human dignity”, published in the print catalogue for “Niemals vergessen!”, an exhibition at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in the autumn of 1946, Frankl was highlighting the systematic murder of patients under National Socialism, an atrocity that in subsequent decades was still often downplayed as “euthanasia”. But for Frankl, “what was presented as organized ‘mercy killing’” was really just “the most callous act of mass murder”. “For the conscientious doctor”, he continued, there had only been one decision to make: “He now had to act either as an executioner’s henchman or as a saboteur in the execution process”.[2]

Indeed, the personal decisions that individual doctors—every one of them bound by the Hippo­cratic oath—had to make in Nazi Germany and the occupied territories were as difficult as they were consequential. It should be noted that not every sphere of a doctor’s work demanded decisions that necessarily made one into either an “executioner’s henchman” or a “saboteur”, to use Frankl’s overly dramatic imagery. This is because a doctor’s daily vocation naturally included a great many “grey areas”, situations in which the choice was not really between “good” and “evil”. And of course, in considering all the developments investigated and analysed by historians in regards to the German medical profession’s conduct before, during, and after the Nazi takeover, one cannot say that every consequence was built solely upon individual decisions or even their collective sum. It was probably the Austrian-American Dr Leo Alexander, a key medical advisor at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial, who put it best in 1949: “The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shifting in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians”.[3]

Our research for “Systemic Disorder: Doctors and Patients in Nazi Germany” has shown that the early years of Nazi rule in Germany were very much characterized by these subtle shifts in the “basic attitude” of the Reich’s doctors. But starting in the mid 1930s, and even more so during the Second World War, the changes became ever more profound and extreme, and were hardly very “subtle” anymore. In order to illustrate this radicalization process more vividly[4], using examples from various areas of thought and fields of action, we have also incorporated into the exhibition specific thematic areas that have received less attention from historians thus far. One such topic is changes in doctor–patient confidentiality (particularly its gradual undermining) during the Nazi era.[5] In considering the steps taken towards undermining medical confidentiality during the Nazi regime—as seen in the documents and images presented by the exhibition—it becomes clear that beyond the doctors and patients themselves, a third group of actors is there at almost every turn: the organizations of the medical profession, namely the Statutory Health Insurance Physician Association of Germany (KVD), the German Medical Federation, the Hartmann Association, and the Reich Medical Association (RÄK). While the German Medical Federation had already emerged in 1873 and the Hartmann Association in 1900, the KVD and the RÄK did not appear on the scene until the Nazi era, “both standing ready as more efficient conduits of National Socialist healthcare policy” since 1933 and 1936 respectively.[6]

Fig. 1: Spine of a binder from the Statutory Health Insurance Physician Association of Germany (KVD), likely from its legal department, labelled “Jews” | Historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00513

The documents left by these physicians’ organizations also reveal much about the role of the KVD and the RÄK in the expulsion of Jewish and undesirable doctors from the medical profession. For example, among the archived papers that likely came from the legal department of the KVD, we found a binder with a handwritten label on the spine bearing just a single word: “Jews” (fig. 1).[7] The dividers found inside (e.g. “termination of Jewish doctors”) were almost certainly labelled during the Nazi era. Contained within are not only various directives on the outlawing of Jewish doctors (sometimes as a memo, sometimes printed in the Reich’s main medical journal) but also regulations on dealing with Jewish “Krankenbehandler” (literally “treaters of the sick”, a humiliating non-doctor title).[8] A nineteen-page memo from the “Reich Führer of Doctors” to all medical associations, dated 17 October 1938 and signed in proxy by Dr Heinrich Grote[9], with the handwritten note “re Jewish Krankenbehandler”, was quite explicit: “Our goal cannot lie in filling up the waiting rooms of German doctors with Jews”.[10] In other words, German-Jewish doctors who had been downgraded to “Krankenbehandler” were to provide medical care to “their own type” so that German (non-Jewish) doctors could focus exclusively on their “ethnonational comrades”.

This binder also traces the processes surrounding the revocation of Jewish doctors’ medical licences on 30 September 1938, for example a circular dated 14 October 1938 from the Reich Physicians’ Registrar to KVD administrative offices that maintained physician registries.[11] This contained the explicit instruction that, from now on, Jewish doctors were no longer to be notified about the revocation of their medical licences, and that the licencing committee no longer needed to process any appeals that might come in.[12]

Decisions are Made, Options are Narrowed, and a Leather Satchel is Found

In evaluating the archives of the KVD and its successor (known here as the “historical archive of the KBV”), previously stored for decades in Cologne and now housed since February 2019 at the Center for Research on Antisemitism (part of Berlin’s Technical University), two volumes stand out for their historical value and significance. First is the large bound collection labelled “Cologne: Questionnaires concerning lineage, up to 30 Sept 1934, G–K” (fig. 2),[13] in which we found the questionnaire completed and signed on 5 May 1933 by the German-Jewish physician Max Goldberg, born 1898. We do not and probably never will know why just this one volume with 352 pages survived, and what happened to the other volumes containing the questionnaires of doctors in Cologne with the initials A–F and L–Z.

Since the questionnaires contain not only detailed information supplied by the doctors involved (for example, about their frontline deployment during the First World War), but also a great many handwritten notes, comments, and underlinings by the relevant KVD bureaucrats, they provide valuable insights into the argumentation and defiance of the physicians threatened by the loss of their medical licences, as well as the work of the responsible administrators.

In a questionnaire dated 12 May 1933, Dr Georg Jungbluth, born in Cologne in 1874, supplied two responses reflecting a certain defiance. In the field marked “Denomination (incl. change of denomination)”, he wrote “always Catholic”, and in the field marked “nationality (incl. change of nationality)”, he wrote “always Prussian”.[14] In another questionnaire, signed by Dr Karl Horchler on 12 May 1933, the respondent had written “Protestant” in the relevant field, but this was countered by a handwritten comment by the KVD bureaucrat handling the case, noting that an “expert” had established Horchler was “a Jew”. However, Horchler had also provided “proof of frontline service” (fig. 3). This part of the handwritten remark was important, because German-Jewish doctors were initially exempted from the revoking of licences if it could be proven they had done frontline service during the First World War.[15]

The review of Horchler’s case by an “expert”, as well as the assessment by the KVD bureaucracy, apparently took almost seven months, since the handwritten remark was dated 7 December 1933. It would seem that the investigation by this unnamed “expert” was triggered by the way that an announcement in a local Nazi newspaper on 27 June 1933, stating that Horchler was “of purely German descent” and that “visiting this doctor could be recommended to any member of the Volk”, was then contradicted by a later notice reflecting a complete turnaround by the same paper. More specifically, the Westdeutscher Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s official organ for the Cologne–Aachen region, published on 15 July 1933 a retraction of its previous pronouncement on the “lineage” of Dr Karl Horchler. It now stated that he was, “through his father’s maternal line, of Jewish descent” (fig. 4).[16]

Labelled book spine (Fig. 2); page 1 of Dr Karl Horchler’s questionnaire of 12 May 1933 (Fig. 3); and page 3 of same with two pasted clippings from the Westdeutscher Beobachter of 27 June and 15 July 1933 (Fig. 4) | Historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00532

The second particularly noteworthy source from the historical archive is a bound volume of minutes taken at the board meetings of the Hartmann Association.[17] Covering a period of two years (11 May 1931 to 14 May 1933), they provide clues as to how the executive committee of the German Medical Federation and the board of the Hartmann Association positioned themselves toward board members like Dr Hans Deuschl who were prominently engaged in the National Socialist German Doctors’ League (NSDÄB).[18] Where Deuschl, along with other Nazi physicians and medical office holders, might have previously been subject to criticism, even to the point of mooting and debating their potential ejection, the talk within the relevant bodies would change considerably after the Nazis took power in Germany: during the Hartmann Association’s executive meeting of 11 March 1933, the board member Dr Friedrich Langbein now saw “the establishment of relations with the National Socialist doctors as necessary”; other members expressed similar views.[19]

Fig. 5: Page 2 of the minutes taken at the 1 April 1933 board meeting of the Hartmann Association (excerpt; see endnote [21] for translation) | Historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00017

The minutes of the executive committee meeting of 24 March 1933 in Nuremberg (just three days after the Potsdam Day celebrations, which saw the highly symbolic handshake between Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Reich President Paul von Hindenburg) are a prime example of the delusional ideas that many board members apparently still held in regards to their future role in the medical profession’s organizations, and in the reconfiguring of “German doctorhood”. For example, although Dr Franz Reichert, deputy chairman of the Hartmann Association, opined that an “altered balance of power” within the medical association’s leadership had already happened, he still felt somewhat optimistic, claiming that: “The leaders of the National Socialist physicians are likewise under a certain amount of pressure, hence their desire for an accommodation” with the “old” board members still in power.[20] At the same time, these minutes, and the ones of the Hartmann Association’s board meeting of 1 April 1933 even more so (see fig. 5), reflected a great willingness to accommodate the new regime, which was embodied in this context by Dr Gerhard Wagner, the future “Reich Führer of Doctors”. The minutes compilation also includes entries documenting the first anti-Jewish measures carried out by the KVD.[21]

Fig. 6: Leather satchel from the Statutory Health Insurance Physician Association of Germany (KVD), labelled inside | Historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00835

The third significant find was not discovered at the historical archive of the KBV in Cologne, but at its headquarters in Berlin. This discovery was even more curious—and the story of its unearthing is a whole “case history” of its own. It is a bulging leather satchel, literally bursting at the seams (fig. 6), discovered in 2017 by Dr Christoph Weinrich, head of the KBV legal department. He had been asked to go through the contents of a safe left behind by one of his predecessors, the KBV in-house counsel Dr Jürgen W. Bösche (1928–2015). According to his commentary in September 2024:

“Behind some completely unrelated files … was an attache case that no one had ever seen before. Inscribed inside was the abbreviation ‘KVD’ alongside its office address at Lindenstrasse 42 in Berlin. … Included was a book of meeting minutes, some handwritten [this is the aforementioned volume containing board meeting minutes from the Hartmann Association dating from the 1930s, U. P.], which showed some fire damage. After flipping through and reading the first few pages, I realized it was a book of enormous historical value, as what I read was about the ejection of Jewish doctors from the profession’s own self-management framework.”[22]

We assume that the satchel dates from the time of Nazi rule in Germany and that it was used by various legal counsels of the KVD, including Clemens Bewer, legal advisor to the Hartmann Association and the KVD, who is described in the section on “The Reich Physicians’ Ordinance and Reich Medical Association”. It is unclear when and how these documents from the Nazi period were placed in the leather satchel, and at what point it was then put in Bösche’s safe. The attache case contains several stacks (including some rather thick ones) of original documents from the 1930s and 40s, along with a few later photocopies. Many of these papers offer deeper insights into the actions of the various institutions and organizations—including the KVD and its regional offices—that helped shape and implement the Nazi regime’s healthcare policy measures.

Fig. 7: Front and back of a memo from the Pomeranian regional office of the KVD in Stettin (today Szczecin) to the KVD head office in Berlin, dated 19 February 1944 | Historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00835

A memo dated 19 February 1944 with the subject line “treatment vouchers for Poles”, reproduced below (fig. 7), is particularly illustrative of the rigidity typically applied by these bodies in regards to forced labourers (in this case, Polish civilians working within the Reich).

About the Exhibition: The Use of “Case Histories” and the Idea behind “Systemic Disorder”

This exhibition about doctors and patients in Nazi Germany uses case histories both in the exhibition banners and in the media station’s interviews with physicians or their descendants. “Case histories” are not always synonymous with biographies, biographic accounts, or autobiographical testimonies. Even if we have mostly chosen the life histories of doctors and patients as the starting point for our “case reconstructions”, in many cases the focus is on tracing the histories of relationships (such as in the section on “Solidarity and Aid”) and conflicts (such as in the section on “Medical Associations and Their Staff”, and in a few instances we present a contrast between two different biographies, careers, viewpoints, or courses of action (such as in the section on “Medical Care at Concentration and Extermination Camps”). And in another section (“The ‘House of German Doctors’ in Berlin”), the “case” concerns a particular plot of land and the plans of the KVD to erect a new building there.

Considering this wide range of “cases”, it should be noted that in various disciplines during the past two decades, there has been increasing discussion about “what constitutes an example, a case, a case study, and a case history, and how these can be differentiated from one another”, as well as “how to assess the significance of any given case and to what extent it can be generalized”.[23] In this context, it has also been noted that it was none other than Sigmund Freud who developed the case study as a methodological approach, as seen in the famous cases of “the Rat Man”, “the Wolf Man”, “Little Hans”, “Dora”, and “Miss Anna O.”[24] In terms of historical scholarship, it was various renowned proponents of microhistory and the history of the everyday who drew upon the insights that have emerged from psychoanalysis and the social sciences since the 1920s, using these to inform their work with case histories and their corresponding in-depth analyses.[25]

For this exhibition, we chose a conceptual approach that emphasizes the decisive role played by historical actors and groups of actors—whether they be doctors, patients, medical professional organizations, or other collectives—in each thematic field under consideration. In selecting these “case histories”, we strove to achieve the broadest possible regional representation, and to ensure that the cases presented were not limited to only the “typical” (let alone “paradigmatic”) ones. For example, the section on “Medical Associations and Their Staff” pointedly presents an exceptional case in the figure of Gerta Disselkamp, an “intransigent” KVD employee who refused to fall in line. In fact, we could not find any comparable instance of such behaviour in the wider body of personnel and administrative files that we examined in the KVD archive. Just as the media station’s interviews with eyewitnesses or their relatives also include certain narratives that incorporate experiences, interpretations, and ways of retelling that do not always match up with commonly held beliefs, the case of Gerta Disselkamp functions as a “corrective to established narratives”,[26] such as the claim that resistance to Nazism, and solidarity with its victims, happened more often than generally portrayed. On the contrary, the KVD files actually confirm that its management and employees were generally quite diligent and deliberate in implementing the Nazi regime’s policy objectives, often making their own suggestions on the practical implementation of the relevant measures.

Both the KVD archival files and these “case histories” make clear that specific actors and groups of actors were active in shaping the roles that doctors and patients took on (or were intended to take on) within a healthcare system that had been increasingly determined by Nazi ideology and policies since 1933. It was the medical profession’s organizations (especially the KVD, founded in August 1933), along with the Reich Medical Association and the Nazi Party’s Main Office for Public Health that would emerge as the decisive players in healthcare policy. And so in choosing the title “Systemic Disorder” for this exhibition, our aim is to highlight how Germany’s change of political system after the Nazi seizure of power was the basic precondition for the radical upheavals and paradigm shifts that took place in healthcare policy. 

Our “diagnosis” of a “systemic disorder” is certainly not an attempt to pathologize the period’s political and social developments in historical retrospect—the exhibition’s title is to be understood as more of a metaphor. Instead, the exhibition aims to trace on what fields the aforementioned shift “in the basic attitude of the physicians” (and medical office holders) took place, sometimes with deadly consequences. It is also important to note that the exhibition we have laid out is precisely (and only) that: an exhibition, and not a comprehensive historical monograph on the subject. Nonetheless, through the incorporation of inspirations from existing studies into organizational sociology,[27] some important building blocks have been produced for future research, for example into the development of medical professional organizations in the first half of the twentieth century, not only by the initial research project, but also by the culminating exhibition, “Systemic Disorder: Doctors and Patients in Nazi Germany”.

[1] Viktor E. Frankl, “Lebenswert und Menschenwürde”, in Viktor Matejka and Leo C. Friedlaender (eds.), “Niemals vergessen!”: Ein Buch der Anklage, Mahnung und Verpflichtung (Vienna, 1946), 51–53, here 51.

[2] Ibid.

[3] The Berlin Medical History Museum at the Charité University Hospital used this quote for the title of its 2020 exhibition about the role of the Charité in the Nazi regime. See exhibition catalogue, Judith Hahn (ed.), “Der Anfang war eine feine Verschiebung in der Grundeinstellung der Ärzte”: Die Charité im Nationalsozialismus und die Gefährdungen der modernen Medizin (Berlin, 2020). The original quote was printed in Derek Humphry and Ann Wickett, The Right to Die: Understanding Euthanasia (New York, 1986), 27.

[4] The historian Hans-Walter Schmuhl, drawing upon an oft-cited interpretative approach by Hans Mommsen, similarly speaks of a “cumulative radicalization of German genetic health policy” since 1933; see Hans-Walter Schmuhl, “Sterilisation, ‘Euthanasie’, ‘Endlösung’: Erbgesundheitspolitik unter den Bedingungen charismatischer Herr­schaft”, in Norbert Frei (ed.), Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik in der NS-Zeit (Munich, 1991), 295–308, here 308.

[5] On this, see the section on “The Reich Physicians’ Ordinance and Reich Medical Association”. The undermining of doctor–patient confidentiality is further evidenced by various other documents we examined in the KVD historical archive. For example, in circular 10/37 from the Reich Medical Association to the constituent medical associations and district medical administrations, dated 17 May 1937 and marked “strictly confidential”, there is a verbatim report of a notice issued on 28 April 1937 by the Reich-and-Prussian Minister of the Interior setting out the new rules and conditions for a case-by-case abrogation of medical confidentiality. This was permitted in cases where the Wehrmacht officially requested the relevant medical files, “as the interests of the Volk, as upheld by the Wehrmacht, must always take precedence over the individual patient’s interest in maintaining personal confidentiality”. See historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00106. See also in the same archive, 00113, memo from Dr L. Conti, Reich Medical Association, Munich, to the heads of the medical associations, dated 21 November 1944 and marked “strictly confidential”, re special cases abrogating the Führer’s directive on the abrogation of medical confidentiality. Here, the “special cases” were the “illnesses of leading personages of the state, the Party, the Wehrmacht, the economy, and so on”, for which, until then, “reports had to be made to Prof. Karl Brandt, Berlin W 8, Reich Chancellery”.

[6] Cf. Winfried Süss, Der “Volkskörper” im Krieg: Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1939–1945 (Munich, 2003), 54.

[7] See historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00513.

[8] This discriminatory special status was created only for Jewish doctors, who all had their licences revoked as of 30 September 1938, following the Fourth Regulation to the Reich Citizenship Law of 25 June 1938. They were still allowed to continue practicing under this new designation, but only for the treatment of Jewish nationals (who, from the Nazi perspective as formulated in the Nuremberg Laws, had already been stripped of their “Reich citizenship rights” three years earlier). See also Rebecca Schwoch, Jüdische Ärzte als Krankenbehandler in Berlin zwischen 1938 und 1945 (Frankfurt, 2018); and ead., “‘Praktisch zum Verhungern verurteilt’: ‘Krankenbehandler’ zwischen 1938 und 1945”, in Thomas Beddies, Susanne Doetz, and Christoph Kopke (eds.), Jüdische Ärztinnen und Ärzte im Nationalsozialismus: Entrechtung, Vertreibung, Ermordung (Berlin, 2017), 75–91.

[9] Dr Heinrich Grote, who had been a member of the medical association for the Province of Hanover since 1928 and of the Hartmann Association’s board since 1929, had served as deputy to Dr Gerhard Wagner, the “Reich Führer of Doctors”, at the Reich headquarters of the KVD since 1934. Joining the Nazi Party in August 1932 and then the SS that same year, he had risen to the rank of SS-Standartenführer by August 1938. See “Pg. Dr. med. Heinrich Grote”, in Ziel und Weg: Zeitschrift des Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Ärzte-Bundes e. V., 8 (1938), 139.

[10] See historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00513, with the memo mentioned here, p. 5.

[11] Concerning this binder, see the study by the exhibition’s co-curator, Sjoma Liederwald, “Ein Aktenordner mit der Aufschrift ‘Juden’: Neue Quellen zur Verdrängung jüdischer Ärzt aus ihrem Beruf 1933–1945”, unpublished academic paper (TU Berlin, 2020). 

[12] This same circular is also found in: historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00513.

[13] See historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00532.

[14] See ibid.

[15] Jews who had done frontline service during the First World War and their family members, as well as civil servants hired before 1 August 1914, were initially exempted from the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” of 7 April 1933. With the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, this exemption ceased to apply.

[16] See historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00532. The newspaper clipping of the notice entitled “Zur Klarstellung” (“To clarify”) is inserted between two pages of the questionnaire signed by Dr Karl Horchler on 12 May 1933 (emphasis in original).

[17] Historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00017

[18] See ibid., minutes of the Hartmann Association board meeting of 22 August 1931, which contains opinions by the two mentioned bodies on an article that Hans Deuschl had published in the Völkischer Beobachter of 8 August 1931 and 12 August 1931, entitled “German doctors, wake up!” Concerning the conflicts between Deuschl and Alfons Stauder (1878–1937), who was chairman of the Hartmann Association and the German Medical Federation before resigning both posts on 7 June 1933, see ibid., minutes of the board meeting on 3/4 June 1932.

[19] See the corresponding minutes, ibid.

[20] In these meeting minutes, see in particular the relevant remarks by Stauder, Reichert, and Haedekamp, ibid. It is not so surprising that, similarly to Stauder and Dr Karl Haedenkamp (a Nazi Party member since 1934), Dr Franz Reichert, vice chairman of the Hartmann Association, spoke like this: just a short time later, in May 1933, he himself joined the Nazi Party; he furthermore joined the NSDÄB, became Head of the Statistics Department at the party’s Main Office for Public Health in 1939, and also served as the director of the Munich office of the Reich Medical Association and the head of the statistics section under the Reich Führer of Health. See Winfried Süss, Der “Volkskörper” im Krieg: Gesundheitspolitik, Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Krankenmord im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1939–1945 (Munich, 2003), 466 (on Haedenkamp) and 474 (on Reichert). For more on Reichert, see also Gerhard Baader, “Keine Kollegen? – Diskriminierung, Vertreibung und Verfolgung jüdischer Ärzte in Deutschland”, Bayerisches Ärzteblatt (April 1989), 157–71, here 163; and “Persönliche Nachrichten,” Ärzteblatt für Rheinland, 1938/19 (15 September 1938), 304.

[21] See historical archive of the KBV, Berlin, 00017. At the top of the report is written: “Minutes of the meeting held on Saturday, 1 April 1933, at 9:30 a.m. in Leipzig. Present: Stauder, Reichert, Streffer, Toeplitz, Hädenkamp, Hartmann, Hadrich, Hardt, Langbein, Schneider, Bewer, Miemietz, Eichelberg, Lautsch, Sonnenberg. Guests: Dr Wagner (Munich), Dr Deuschl (Munich). Apologies: Wester, Rüder. Exited: Ritter.” The displayed extract reads: “At the Berlin outpatient facilities, all the doctors have been dismissed. The state commissioner for Baden, Dr Schütz, will take part in the further negotiations. He has removed all Jewish doctors in Baden from health insurance practice. He has licenced new health insurance physicians (non-Jewish) and has had the licences formally issued by the adjudication board until now. For the future, he rejects such a requirement. Dr Schütz explains afterwards that these measures were taken only as part of the defensive boycott campaign.
Wagner: We demand that, henceforth, no further Jews be licenced for health insurance practice. As for the Jews already licenced, I cannot say at the moment what should happen to them. 
Schütz: Is of the opinion that Jewish physicians removed from health insurance practice should not be allowed to return to same. 
It is requested that his directives be forwarded to us so that they can be presented to the R.A.M. [Reich Labour Ministry]. This is agreed” (emphasis in original).

[22] See written communication from Dr Christoph Weinrich to the author, dated 19 September 2024.

[23] See Marietta Meier, “Paradigmatische Fälle in der Geschichtswissen­schaft: Kommentar zu einem historiographischen Normalfall”, in Ruben Hackler and Katharina Kinzel (eds.), Paradigmatische Fälle: Konstruktion, Narration und Verallgemeinerung von Fall-Wissen in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (Basel, 2016), 157–66, quotes at 157 and 162. From a psychotherapeutic perspective, for example, there is the concept of “paradigmatic life stories”; see Karl-Ernst Bühler, “Die Biographie in Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie,” in id. (ed.), Zeitlichkeit als psychologisches Prinzip: Über Grundfragen der Biographie-Forschung (Cologne, 1986), 135–69, here 152ff.

[24] See Joy Damousi, Birgit Lang, and Katie Sutton, “Introduction: Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge”, in eaed. (eds.), Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge (Hoboken, 2015), 1–12, here 5.

[25] See Ruben Hackler and Katharina Kinzel, “Paradigmatische Fälle in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften: Eine wissenschaftshistorische Einleitung”, in eid. (eds.), Paradigmatische Fälle: Konstruktion, Narration und Verallgemeinerung von Fall-Wissen in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (Basel, 2016), 5–26, here 6ff. and 14.

[26] Cf. ibid., 15ff.

[27] For example, a more pronounced organizational sociology perspective on the development of medical professional organizations in the first half of the twentieth century, similar to what was presented by the sociologist Stefan Kühl in his 2014 study Ganz normale Organisationen, might help us better understand and contextualize the ways in which such organizations operate, and how they can become important conduits and instruments in the implementation of inhumane National Socialist policies. See Stefan Kühl, Ganz normale Organisationen: Zur Soziologie des Holocaust (Berlin, 2014). In this context, Kühl considers the “expansion of zones of indifference within organizations” to be an important factor, and—borrowing a term from the sociologist Lewis A. Coser, who emigrated from Germany in 1933, going via France and Portugal to the USA—discusses the development of “greedy organizations” in totalitarian systems, particularly the Nazi state, as “organizations that demand exclusive loyalty from their members by seeking to control, restrict, or even prohibit commitments to other roles”. Cf. ibid., 307–21, quote at 315–16.