Lothar Stengel-von Rutkowski

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Lothar August Arnold Stengel-von Rutkowski (3 September 1908 – 24 August 1992) was a German physician, poet, and representative of National Socialist racial hygiene.

Biography

Lothar Stengel-von Rutkowski was born at Hofzumberge, Courland. He came from an old German-Baltic family. His father was the Lutheran pastor Arnold von Rutkowski, his mother was Elisabeth von Bahder. At the age of ten he experienced the murder of his parents by the Bolsheviks. Together with his brother he moved to Germany, where he was adopted by the historian Edmund E. Stengel in Marburg an der Lahn. He began to concern himself with the racial question after 1927 and studied the works of Fritz Lenz and Hermann Muckermann. In Marburg he attended the Gymnasium Philippinum, where he graduated in 1928. He was a member of the Deutsche Knappenschaft, the Junghessen and the Jungstahlhelm. From 1928 to 1933, he studied medicine, anthropology and racial hygiene in Munich, Marburg and Vienna. He was a member of the völkisch Eagle and Falcon youth league. In Munich, he became a member of the Guild Society.[1]

In April 1930, Stengel-von Rutkowski joined the NSDAP and in November 1930 the SS. In the SS followed the appointment to Untersturmführer on March 24, 1934, to Hauptsturmführer on September 12, 1937, and to Sturmbannführer in 1939.

After his studies, Stengel-von Rutkowski worked as head of the Racial Hygiene Department of the Race and Settlement Main Office (RuSHA) of the SS in Munich until 1934. When the office was founded, he was responsible in the department for health certificates.

Karl Astel brought him to Weimar in 1933 as department head of the Thuringian State Office for Racial Affairs. From November 1934, he headed the Department of Teaching and Research of the Weimar Race Office at the University of Jena. There he became Karl Astel's closest collaborator. Rutkowski was a close friend of the race theorist Hans F. K. Günther. Under Astel, Stengel-von Rutkowski advanced to become one of the main promoters of a "German biology" and "German philosophy". With his publications, he influenced large parts of the population.[2] In 1936, he was appointed as a judge at the Jena Hereditary Health Court.[3] From October 1, 1937, he was a government and medical councilor.

In 1938 he received his doctorate in Jena with his thesis Die Fortpflanzung der thüringischen Bauern.

In 1940, he was a lecturer in racial hygiene, cultural biology, and racial hygienic philosophy at the Medical Faculty. In the same year he became deputy Gaudozentenführer (local academic leader). With his thesis What is a people? he habilitated in Jena (1941). One of Stengel-von Rutkowski's tasks was to establish for the SS in Jena "a large collection center of all documents significant for the history of the racial idea." In this context, he administered the estate of Wilhelm Schallmayer and made efforts to obtain the archives of Alfred Ploetz and Ernst Rüdin.[4] Stengel-von Rutkowski also championed the ideas of Ernst Haeckel. Stengel-von Rutkowski's definition of race significantly shaped the party ideology and found its way into the official dictionary from the SS office.[5]

Stengel-von Rutkowski was co-editor of Jakob Wilhelm Hauer's journal Deutscher Glaube. Monatsschrift für arteigene Lebensgestaltung, Weltschau und Frömmigkeit, which appeared between April 1934 and February 1944. In German Faith Movement Working Group, founded on July 1933, and existing until May 1934, he was a member of the Fuehrer Council for the Eagles and Falcons.[6]

From 1940 on, he was deployed several times as a Waffen-SS troop doctor in the Balkans, in the Soviet Union and in the "fight against gangs" in Greece. In 1944, he was head of department in the marriage office of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office. From January 1944, he worked as a doctor in the RuSHA in Prague.[7] He became a Soviet prisoner of war in 1945.

Because of his political activities, Stengel-von Rutkowski was dismissed in absentia from public service on September 13, 1945.[8] In the Soviet occupation zone, various of his writings were placed on the list of literature to be eliminated. In July 1949, after four years of imprisonment in Russia, he returned to Marburg, where he wrote a justification manuscript entitled The Idea of Race in Science and Politics.

In 1954, Stengel-von Rutkowski passed a medical exam in Düsseldorf, and from 1958 to 1972 he worked as a medical officer and as a general practitioner for the district of Waldeck in Korbach. According to Isabel Heinemann, who refers to his file in the Berlin Document Center (BDC), he was a member of the German Unitarian Religious Community. Together with Jakob Wilhelm Hauer, Stengel-von Rutkowski founded the "Free Academy" on April 4, 1956 (entered in the register of associations on January 6, 1957 in Nuremberg). From 1956 to 1972, he was its scientific secretary. After Hauer's death in 1962, he became chairman of the Academy.

He spent his retirement from 1972 in Korbach, where he wrote numerous volumes of poetry. In 1992, Stengel-von Rutkowski wrote to plead guilty to the death of his sister Gisela, born in 1916, who was mentally ill and murdered on June 13, 1941, at the Hadamar Euthanasia Centre.

Works

  • "Rasse und Geist". In: Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, Vol. IV, No. 35 (1933), pp. 86–90.
  • Grundzüge der Erbkunde und Rassenpflege (1934; 1939; 1943)
  • Hans F. K. Günther, der Vorkämpfer für den nordischen Gedanken (1936)
  • Das Reich dieser Welt. Lieder und Verse eines Heiden (1937; poetry)
  • Deutsch auch im Glauben (1939)
  • Die unterschiedliche Fortpflanzung der 20000 thüringischen Bauern (1939)
  • Der Gang durch das Jahr. Lyrische Aquarelle (1939; poetry)
  • Was ist ein Volk? Der biologische Volksbegriff. Eine kulturbiologische Untersuchung seiner Definition und seiner Bedeutung für Wissenschaft, Weltanschauung und Politik (1940; habilitation thesis)
  • Wissenschaft und Wert (1941)
  • Von Allmacht und Ordnung des Lebens (1942)
  • Das naturgesetzliche Weltbild der Gegenwart (1943)
  • Spur durch die Dünen der Zeit. Marburger Spiegel (1958; poetry)
  • Die Gesichte des Einhorns (1968; poetry)
  • "Auf der Suche nach neuen weltanschaulichen Behausungen," Zs. Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit
  • "Lebensreligion und Wertidealismus," Studien zur Arbeit der Freien Akademie Vol. XXIV (1977)
  • "Die Arbeit der freien Akademie 1956–1976", Zs. Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit, No. 2 (1977)
  • Vogelflug und Seinsminute (1978; poetry)
  • Im Spiegel des Seins (1983; poetry)
  • Der Wanderer. Bilder zwischen Tag und Traum (1988; poetry)
  • Zaubereien in Bild und Wort (1990)
  • Jahreslauf und Lebensspur. Frühe Gedichte (1990; poetry)

Notes

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References

  • Michael Grüttner, Biographisches Lexikon zur nationalsozialistischen Wissenschaftspolitik (= Studien zur Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte. 6). Heidelberg: Synchron (2004), p. 168.
  • Uwe Hoßfeld, "Nationalsozialistische Wissenschaftsinstrumentalisierung: Die Rolle von Karl Astel und Lothar Stengel von Rutkowski bei der Genese des Buches von (Heinz Brücher) Ernst Haeckels Bluts- und Geisteserbe (1936)". In Erika Krauße, Der Brief als wissenschaftshistorische Quelle. Berlin: Verl. für Wissenschaft und Bildung (2005).
  • Uwe Hoßfeld, Michal Šimůnek, Die Kooperation der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena und [der] Deutschen Karls-Universität Prag im Bereich der „Rassenlehre“ 1933–1945. Erfurt (2008).
  • Hinrich Jantzen, Namen und Werke, 3 (Quellen und Beiträge zur Geschichte der Jugendbewegung, 12). Frankfurt am Main (1975), pp. 299–304.
  • Wolfgang A. Ritter, Der Lyriker Lothar Stengel-von Rutkowski. Ein Wanderer zwischen Natur und Geist. Loßburg (1992).
  • Andreas Mettenleiter, "Selbstzeugnisse, Erinnerungen, Tagebücher und Briefe deutschsprachiger Ärzte. Nachträge und Ergänzungen III (I–Z)". In: Würzburger medizinhistorische Mitteilungen. 22 (2003), pp. 269–305.
  • Paul Weindling, "„Mustergau“ Thüringen. Rassenhygiene zwischen Ideologie und Machtpolitik". In: Norbert Frei, Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik in der NS-Zeit (= Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte). München: R. Oldenbourg (1991), pp. 81–97.
  • Carola L. Gottzmann, Petra Hörner, Lexikon der deutschsprachigen Literatur des Baltikums und St. Petersburgs. Berlin: De Gruyter (2007), pp. 1246–47.

External links

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  1. ↑ Breuer, Stefan (2008). Die Völkischen in Deutschland. Darmstadt, p. 212.
  2. ↑ Hoßfeld, Uwe (2004). "Rassenkunde und Rassenhygiene an der Universität Jena im Dritten Reich". In: Karen Bayer, Frank Sparing, Wolfgang Woelk, eds., Universitäten und Hochschulen im Nationalsozialismus und in der frühen Nachkriegszeit. Steiner Verlag, p. 212.
  3. ↑ Klee, Ernst (2003). Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Frankfurt, p. 601.
  4. ↑ Weindling, Paul (1993). Health, Race and German Politics between National Unification and Nazism, 1870–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press, p. 498.
  5. ↑ Simon, Gerd (2000). „Art, Auslese, Ausmerze …“ etc. Ein bisher unbekanntes Wörterbuch-Unternehmen aus dem SS-Hauptamt im Kontext der Weltanschauungslexika des 3. Reichs. Tübingen: Gesellschaft für interdisziplinäre Forschung, p. 47.
  6. ↑ Nanko, Ulrich (1993). Die Deutsche Glaubensbewegung. Marburg, p. 147.
  7. ↑ Brandes, Detlef (2012). „Umvolkung, Umsiedlung, rassische Bestandsaufnahme“ – NS-„Volkstumspolitik“ in den böhmischen Ländern. München: Oldenbourg, pp. 232–34, 305.
  8. ↑ Kodalle, Klaus-Michael (2004). Homo perfectus? Behinderung und menschliche Existenz. Königshausen & Neumann, p. 89.
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